KDE Plasma has robust support for desktop icons, just like Windows and macOS do. And it’s not going anywhere, either!
But over the years, the codebase has gotten a bit crusty. You know how these things happen: conventions change but the old code isn’t updated; features are added that cut against the original design without a corresponding refactor; implementation details that were relevant in the past but aren’t anymore; and so on. This internal messiness is a source of bugs, and we’d like to correct that!
So for a while now, various folks in KDE have wanted to overhaul the technical implementation and bring Plasma’s desktop icons up to modern standards. But in the process, it’s also necessary to know how we want the system to behave!
It turns out there’s a lot of hidden complexity embedded in the core feature to allow manually moving icons around, and the current system doesn’t always handle it in the best way. Consider what should happen to manually-arranged icons in cases like these:
- You rotate a screen with icons on it
- You disconnect a screen with icons on it
- The resolution or scale factor of a screen with icons on it grows or shrinks
- The screen fills up with icons and then you add more
This is not simple stuff! So we’d like your input.
Akseli Lahtinen has put together a survey where you can share your views on how the system should handle various complex situations. You can access it here: https://survey.kde.org/355778.
Responses will be used to guide future development. So if you’d like to help shape that future, make your opinions known here! Feel free to share this survey far and wide; we want as many responses as possible.
Thanks, everyone!
Finally! Hopefully we are going to have modern icons, aligned with today’s trend. I wish I will never want to change the default Breeze icons if the new ones will make my eyes happy 😊😊😊
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So an idea came to me during the survey. What if behavior could be configured on a per-icon basis? When I disconnect screen 2, some of you stay, some jump back, that sort of thing. And the various overflow options all seem useful, what if that was configurable to whichever you like?
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Per-icon behavior sounds like one of those things that maintainers would hate and users would largely ignore.
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please no
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for years i’m desperately missing the concept of ‘badges’ or ’emblems’ (as linuxint / cinnamon / Nemo hat ist for folder (and files?) icons. with other words: the separation of basic folder icon, shape, color and symbols on top indicating the content of it, such as music, documents, images, misc etc. thy for reading.
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When enough time (say, 2 weeks) has passed I will release the data in nice graphs.
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Hi @akseli!
I don’t use desktop icons but I tried answering the survey anyway so you’d get the perspective of at least one user who doesn’t care 🙂
But I hit a roadblock: in the first question, even if I select only the “I don’t really use desktop icons” option, I’m still required to answer e.g. the 3rd question, which makes no sense in my case (any answer would be a lie).
You might want to end the survey early if someone answers that, or more likely remove that option completely, since it also kinda contradicts the other available options.
Cheers!
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I think desktop icons are messy and I don’t use them personally, but I answered the survey as if I did.
Frankly what I would like for icons is for taskbar icons to have better colors. The default Breeze ones are too plain so I need third party ones. I don’t know why you’d want all of them without vibrant colors to notice at a glance which one is what.
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I found this post a few days ago and did not see an expiration date listed in the survey.
Unfortunately, the survey expired before I was able to finish writing a response to the “additional comments” question. Although I now have no way to submit answers to the rest of the questions, below is my response to the last question.
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