 If you're a desktop computer user and you still use desktop icons, if you still just throw a bunch of icons on the desktop, please stop doing that. And it doesn't matter whether you're using Windows, Mac, or Linux, it doesn't matter the operating system, quit throwing everything on your desktop. That is not good for organization, structure, it's not good for an increased speed as far as workflow, and it's also not good for the performance of your operating system. So if you're wondering what I'm talking about with desktop icons, you typically see this especially with Windows users, but Mac and Linux users do this too, where people will just throw everything, files, quick launchers for programs and things like that that will put an icon on the desktop for virtually everything they do on their computer. And pretty soon they could have 100, 200, even 300 desktop icons sitting on the screen. And you have to understand that these icons, these are images, right? They're image files that do have to load and it does take some compute cycles to actually load those icons. And so you're actually slowing down your computer, which on Linux and Mac, maybe it's a minor thing. On Windows it's a major thing because Windows is already kind of a heavy operating system and so many Windows machines are underpowered for the operating system. You guys know this, if you've ever done any kind of computer repair work, think of all the people that have brought you their Windows laptops and they were really slow. They complained that it takes two days for this thing to boot up. And when you actually look at their desktop, what does their desktop typically look like? I bet it typically looks like this. So that kind of desktop definitely does have some performance problems, right? But also, you really, just for organizational purposes, you shouldn't be treating your desktop as kind of like a junk drawer when you just throw crap in it. No, that's where everything goes. No, no, no. There's a better way. So this is Ubuntu 22.04. Now Ubuntu is one of those Linux distributions that will allow you to put icons on the desktop. Not all Linux distributions allow this and it's not a distribution thing. It's actually a desktop environment thing. And really, it's not even a desktop environment thing. Really it's a window manager thing. Not all window managers allow you to place icons on the desktop. As a matter of fact, on Linux, the vast majority of window managers don't actually have functionality for putting icons on the desktop. Pretty much none of you're telling window managers are going to do this. Most standalone window managers don't allow you to do this. Pretty much the only window managers that allow this are the big window managers that are part of the big desktop environment. So GNOME, KDE Plasma, XFCE, Cinnamon, they all allow you to put icons on the desktop. Although there were some versions of GNOME for a brief period where they actually got rid of the ability to put icons on the desktop and Ubuntu kind of hacked GNOME in a way to actually put that functionality back in because computer users were complaining. But if I open the file manager here, you can see this file here, just a random file. I can actually drag it and put it on the desktop. And of course, so many computer users will do this. They'll just put all the files. Every time they have a new file and they think they'll come back to it, they'll just start throwing all these files on the desktop. And maybe they'll throw some programs on the desktop. I don't believe will actually allow me to put a program on the desktop. Yeah, and that actually makes sense because really, really you shouldn't put files or quick launcher programs on your desktop because this all this is when you're dragging stuff to the desktop, at least in Linux. There's a folder in your home directory called desktop, right? And you see those same four files are here. So this is just a representation of what is in this particular directory. But that's not really where things belong, because typically when you create your user on Linux, it creates a home directory for that user. And inside that user's home directory, you will find documents, downloads, music, pictures, public templates and videos. These directories are already created for you. Why are they there? Because documents is really where you should be placing documents. You shouldn't just be dragging documents like these text documents to the desktop. That's not where they go. As a matter of fact, let me go ahead and correct that problem. Let me put them in the proper place. Downloads by default, anything you download from the internet goes into downloads and all your major web browsers default to the downloads directory. So anything you get from the internet should go into download. You can see I've downloaded a couple of things here inside the Saboon 2 virtual machine. And of course, anything that is a audio file, anything that's music should go in music. Anything that's pictures should go in pictures. I know so many people that take so many photographs on their camera. You know, thousands every year, and they start throwing all of that stuff on the desktop. That's not where that goes. That should go in the pictures directory. Same thing for videos. If you're one of these people that are constantly downloading movies from the internet and storing them locally, put all of that stuff in the videos directory. That's where that belongs. And I'm telling you this as somebody, as a former Windows user, I converted to Linux about 15 years ago, as far as I switched from Windows XP at the time over to Linux as my primary desktop operating system. And when I was on Windows XP, I used the desktop as far as dropping icons on it. I was one of these Windows users with a million icons on the desktop. And when I came to Linux, I immediately got into all these various window managers like Openbox and Xmonet and awesome and things like that early on, and you couldn't have desktop icons. And when I realized I couldn't have desktop icons, it was no big deal. As a matter of fact, I was actually shocked at how much better my computing experience was because it's distracting. It really is. When you were used to having that cluttered up desktop with so many things that you really couldn't find because it's not even organized. It's kind of like working at a messy desk. That's the way it was when I was using that messy Windows desktop with all those icons. And now when I'm on Linux, I have a clean desk, right? It's like sitting at a clean workstation. And really dragging stuff and just throwing it on the desktop. This is something that started 30, 40 years ago in the early days of Mac and Windows because back then operating systems were very different. And we didn't have good menu systems actually go and search for all your programs, all your executable binaries on the system. And sometimes it was hard as far as navigating the file system to find the files that you work on all the time. So it was convenient in the early day, like in Windows 3.1, it was convenient just to throw stuff on the desktop, right? But as things progressed and these start menus in Windows and the old Macintosh computers, as things got better, as these operating systems got better, you no longer needed to just throw all of this garbage on the desktop like that because it was so easy just to navigate this menu. And then panels came along. And these panels had taskbars for your open programs. But also these panels started allowing you to add quick launchers. And if I go back to Ubuntu here, this panel here, these are just quick launchers. These programs are not running, although this one is, it's got the dot. So this is the file manager. But these are just quick launchers to quickly launch something like launching the terminal there, right? No longer would I drag an icon and have it on the desktop. That doesn't make any sense because if your panel accepts these quick launchers, that makes more sense. And you're always going to be able to see the panel. You're not going to ever see your desktop and be able to click those icons. For example, if I make this maximized, this window here, how would I click on a desktop icon to launch a program? I can't even see the icons, right? So really, if you've got a panel, and this could be any desktop environment, of course, I'm using Ubuntu's GNOME here. But if I switch over to MX Linux, which uses XFCE. Now, this would allow me, I believe, XFCE to actually put programs on the desktop because it still has that functionality built in. For example, Genie, the text editor. So I could have a quick launcher here for Genie. I have to mark that as executable. But now that icon, anytime I click it, will launch Genie. But again, that doesn't make sense because, again, say I have something open like a full screen web browser, full screen text editor, how would I ever click that Genie icon? I'll never be able to see it. So just, like all of this stuff that's sitting on the desktop, just highlight it, hit the delete key and get rid of it. It doesn't need to be there. And of course, I was talking about Linux in this case with these virtual machines of Ubuntu and MX Linux. But the exact same thing can be said for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. Desktop icons, that is a thing from the past. And I'm talking about the distant past. We're talking 30 plus years ago. That made sense. It has not made sense to use desktop icons in at least 25, 30 years. And I know people are going to complain, hey, DET, my grandmother, she just loves doing stuff on the desktop because she doesn't know any better. I'm not talking to grandma. I'm not talking to people that barely know how to use a computer. If you're watching this channel, you probably know how to use a computer. I'm talking to you. If you're watching this and you kind of know your way around Windows, Mac, Linux, you've been around the block a few times, right? And you're still using desktop icons. It's really you I'm talking about. And I really just give it a try. Right now, just go get everything off your desktop, just delete it. Just move all that stuff to a different directory or actually try to properly organize that stuff. I think you will be amazed at how much more enjoyable your desktop computing experience will be almost immediately just from having that clean workspace. Now, before I go, I need to thank a few special people. I need to thank the producers of this episode. And of course, I'm talking about Dustin, Gabe, James, Matt, Max, and Michael, Mitchell, Paul, West, Wanyabald, Homie, Alan, Armoredragon, Chuck, Commander, Angry, Diokai, Dylan, Greg, Marsh, Ram, Erion, Alexander, Paul, Peace, Archon, Fedor, Polytech, Realities for Less Red Prophet, Steven, Tools, Devler, and Willie. These guys, they're my pastured patrons over on Patreon without these guys. This episode would not have been possible. The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen, all these names you're seeing on the screen right now. These are all my supporters because I don't have any corporate sponsors. Corporations don't sponsor boomer rants. I depend on you guys, the community. If you want more videos about Linux and free and open source software, subscribe to DistroTube over on Patreon. All right, guys, peace. Some of you guys can't even see your wallpaper. You've got so many icons.