Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: How do I choose a second window manager?

[Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 10:15 PM, Duncan<1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> wrote:
> Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> posted
> 5bdc1c8b0906181839r18d3a8c0yfa9d5da993d66b6f@mail.gmail.com, excerpted
> below, on  Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:39:51 -0700:
>
>> This issue seems to come up occasionally. I'll download some zip file to
>> my desktop and use an archive manager to drag a bunch of stuff out.
>> Having done that I might delete some audio files but want to keep
>> others, or I might want to separate them into different folders based on
>> what I'm going to do with them.
>
> I do something a bit different that should work in your case, but I do it
> for a different reason. (I don't like many things on the desktop at all,
> if there's more than can be counted on the fingers of one hand, I'm
> getting uncomfortable.  Thus, while I do use the desktop for individual
> files occasionally, that's /all/ I keep there, individual files.  BTW, no
> "trash" or other such "system" stuff there either.  Well, except for...)
>
> What I hit upon is this:
>
> 1.  In my home dir, I have a "dir" subdir.  But it could be called
> "links" or "working" or "inbox", or something else of similar nature.
>
> 2.  On my desktop I then keep a single symlink, to ~/dir.  (It's a
> symlink because one time when I used to keep "dir" on the desktop itself,
> one time, I accidentally deleted it... and everything in it!  Since the
> dir is now elsewhere and all that's on the desktop is a symlink, no big
> deal if I do that again, since all it will have deleted is the symlink,
> and I can easily recreate /that/.
>
> 3.  Thus, while the desktop itself stays uncluttered, my "dir" aka
> "links" or whatever one wishes to call it, dir, is a single-click away.
> If I want to work with it, I can open it with a single click, but at the
> same time, I don't have to stare at all those ugly icons on the desktop
> all the time.
>

If I'm understanding you correctly this is essentially do now. I have
a couple of external 1394 and USB drives that I use to save web-found
media as well as customer audio. The model I've used in the past is to
decompress a zip file with 200-300 audio files onto my desktop, and
once the files are there I would just drag them to different folder
links. On Gnome I could grab 20 *.wav files, open a specific USB link,
get a folder, create some sub-folder and then simply drag the 20 wave
files to the location I want them in. With XFCE I cannot do that - IF
- I'm simply looking at the desktop. The files are selected but only
the first one selected is deposited at the new location. However if I
open a file system browser in XFCE, cd within that browser to my
desktop, I then can select and drag multiple files successfully.

Like you I don't like a lot of stuff on my desktop. I do keep a few
application launcher icons there in Gnome. However I personally like
downloads from customers/partners as well as things I download using
Firefox to go to my desktop because:

1) If they are on my desktop they will be dealt with immediately, and

2) On all my different systems, both Linux & Windows, the only thing
in common by default is the desktop.

So, I use the desktop as temporary storage and then clean it up
quickly. That's better for me than having downloads go to some obscure
place and then be forgotten about.

<SNIP>
I'll comment on the rest of your post later. I'm busy trying to get a
trade on soonish.

Cheers,
Mark