Desktop icons.

[Perd Hapley]

I avoid them, other than weather and CPU/RAM *dgets, and recycle bin.  I hate a desktop cluttered with stuff.

How about you?

[Stetson]

I have 4 folders on my desktop, everything goes in one of them

[BridgeRunner]

I like to be able to see what I'm working on.  I have, any given time, a couple dozen documents and folders on my desktop, and I rely pretty heavily on the dock feature in OS X.  I have at least a dozen applications hanging out there at any given time. 

[S. Williamson]

My desktop: http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/8715/adtf.jpg (linked for large size)

Not too cluttered. 

[41magsnub]

I have an urge to post the sales guy's desktop from The Website Is Down 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRGljemfwUE

[Perd Hapley]

I rely pretty heavily on the dock feature in OS X.

What is this dock of which you speak?

[Vodka7]

I just keep everything I use running all the time.  I've got dual core, a decent enough amount of RAM, and don't run anything too taxing.  Spread across two monitors I really don't even need to minimize anything, although I usually keep my music player in the tray.

Typical load, from right to left:

Xchat
Pidgin window with active conversations
VLC
Firefox
VirtualBox running WinXP with Newsleecher
Gwibber
Pidgin contact list
Nautilus (file browser) with three tabs
Tilda (console app of choice)

And in the tray:

Amarok
Transmission
Dropbox

If I need to focus on something I'll shift over to my second desktop, which usually just runs a console and whatever I'm actively working on (OO.org, usually.)

Anyway, I never really see my desktop except for a few seconds after I reboot.  I keep the gnome default shortcuts and a link to my most-used VM.  Everything else I open through menus or Gnome-Do (remapping Gnome-Do to winkey+r was the key for me replacing my one last lingering Windows habit.)

[BridgeRunner]

What is this dock of which you speak?

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2474

It is handy.  I heard that one of the recent flavors of Windows had something similar?

In any case, I like it. 

[Perd Hapley]

Windows has had something similar (taskbar) for a long, long time, but the Windows 7 version is more flexible/useful.

[BridgeRunner]

Windows has had something similar (taskbar) for a long, long time, but the Windows 7 version is more flexible/useful.

Taskbar is worlds different from dock.  I guess what I heard is that they were changing taskbar to make it more like the Dock.

[Regolith]

Meh.  I find the dock gets in the way more than it helps.

[Perd Hapley]

Taskbar is worlds different from dock.  I guess what I heard is that they were changing taskbar to make it more like the Dock.

From the description you linked to, the 7 taskbar is more like Dock, in that you can put anything you want on the new task bar, and open a second instance (window) of an application from it, when you already have one open.  With the old taskbar, I think you had a limited number of items that would fit in the Quick Launch area, with the rest of the task bar being reserved for open window tabs.

But I guess you've probably got more experience with both systems, whereas I only have Windows and that one time I tried OS X for ten minutes.

http://www.xvsxp.com/interface/dock_vs_taskbar.php

http://arstechnica.com/software/news/2009/01/dock-and-windows-7-taskbar.ars/1

There are different settings for the task bar, that can make it more or less like Dock.

[sanglant]

desktop icons are disabled, there is a tool bar set to auto-hide and always on top on the right edge of my desktop with "my computer" on the top and my desktop below it. and one on the left edge with the quick launch directory. taskbar on the bottom, really saves time digging in the start menu.

[230RN]

I can't show mine at home.  I usually have something highly erotic on it.  I have about twelve "extra" icons which change frequently, since most of them are  just shortcuts to files I'm currently working on.  I usually keep my tray "double-ized" both at work and home. 

Cuts down a little on the real estate available sometimes, but that's what F11 is for.

A couple of people at work have their entire destop absolutely covered with shortcuts, especially one gal.  I note that she has just as much trouble navigating through all those icons to find something than if she just navigated through the MyComputer file folders directly.  She doesn't change the icons (doesn't know how to), so every shortcut has the little pic of a file folder and she has to actually read the title for each one to find anything.

I try to show her a couple of things from time to time to simplify her life, and she always kind of gasps and says, "Ohhh, I didn't know you could do that."

Terry, 230RN

[S. Williamson]

I can't show mine at home.  I usually have something highly erotic on it. 

Like this?    http://www.cherrys.com/images/angelo1_big.jpg









(SFW, I promise) 

[Perd Hapley]

I'd kinda like to have some 98 Mauser pron for a background, but the dimensions usually don't work out well (at least for those of us with garden-variety monitors).

[Tuco]

Like this?    http://www.cherrys.com/images/angelo1_big.jpg









(SFW, I promise) 

Ohhhhhhhh yea.
Mmmmmmmm.
Grrrrrr.
Rowrorowr.

Hubba hubba.

[sanglant]

I'd kinda like to have some 98 Mauser pron for a background, but the dimensions usually don't work out well (at least for those of us with garden-variety monitors).

if you have photo editing software that will let you set a crop aspect ratio, plug in your desktop size and resize after cropping.(window's scaler(sp) sucks) i spent hours figuring out how to set the aspect ratio, and still haven't got it working quite the way i want. but it's a lot easier then free handing it. oh another way is to make a blank image the size you want, then paste the image into the blank image as a new layer and move it around to set your crop lines. but i haven't done it that way lately, so i don't know if it'll work in newer software.

edit: the easy way. forgot about it.

[230RN]

I can't show mine at home.  I usually have something highly erotic on it.

 
Like this?    http://www.cherrys.com/images/angelo1_big.jpg

Wow!  Twins!

Nah, more like this nude descending a staircase.

(SFW)

MS's Paint works pretty good for changing vertical and horizontal dimensions in pics.  Save pic, right-click on the saved pic, "Open With" Paint, select "Image," choose "Stretch/Skew," and put in your numbers.  Save again.  Might want to add "cropped" to the name so you don't over-write the original pic.

You can correct aspect ratio just by putting in different percentages for horizontal and vertical.

It also crops pictures pretty well.

Hint:  If the opening field in Paint is too big, you can pre-shrink the field by inserting "10 percent" in the stretch/skew field before pasting in your picture.

Actually, with my slow connection, I wish more people would shrink or crop their pics before embedding them in their posts.

Terry, 230RN

[seeker_two]

I usually keep icons for programs/files that I'm going to use fairly regularly. Everything else goes in the "Unused Icons" folder.

[GigaBuist]

I can't show mine at home.  I usually have something highly erotic on it.

A few years ago there was a guy that took a screencap of his desktop to show it off to other users on a forum.  He forgot to remove the "Shemale Porn" folder from his desktop before he did it.  Hilarity ensued.

I just keep everything I use running all the time.  ...snip...

Typical load, from right to left:

Newb. :)  I have to toss my taskbar up on the left or right side of my screen to keep it readable.  Right now I've got (top down): IE, shortcut to GodMod on Windows 7, Remote Desktop quick launch, command prompt quick launch, WinScp quick launch, Winamp, TweetDeck, Messenger (two windows), Excel (four windows), Outlook, Notepad, Access, Word, Chrome, Gtalk (two windows), random explorer window, and Foxit PDF Reader.

Windows has had something similar (taskbar) for a long, long time, but the Windows 7 version is more flexible/useful.

The Windows Vista/7 taskbar additions are a direct rip from OS X's dock.  Other rather blatant rip-offs were the Widgets (Dashboard in OS X) and the search feature on the Start menu (Spotlight in OS X). 

As for the original question (re: desktop) I use it as my crapping ground.  I never launch programs from it so random files that I'm copying for an install or whatever live there. Every 2-3 months I clean it up and start over.

[Regolith]

The Windows Vista/7 taskbar additions are a direct rip from OS X's dock.  Other rather blatant rip-offs were the Widgets (Dashboard in OS X) and the search feature on the Start menu (Spotlight in OS X). 

From what I understand, Spotlight is a rip off of the Vista feature.  Basically, Apple ripped it off while Vista was still in beta, then managed to launch OS X first. 

[GigaBuist]

From what I understand, Spotlight is a rip off of the Vista feature.  Basically, Apple ripped it off while Vista was still in beta, then managed to launch OS X first. 

Spotlight was announced in June 2004 by Apple and released with OS X 10.4 in April 2005.

The first beta of Vista hit in July 2005.

So, uh, no. :)

[Perd Hapley]

Hasn't XP had a search box in the start menu, since like, forever?

[GigaBuist]

Hasn't XP had a search box in the start menu, since like, forever?

Heck, the "search" thing has been in the Start menu since Windows 95.  But that was just a balls-out search of the whole disk or sub folder after you kicked it off.  Under Vista, Windows 7, and OS X 10.4+ they have a service that crawls the disk and indexes the contents to make them available much quicker.  And in Vista/7 when you hit the Windows Key that's where the keyboard focus goes: the quick search box.  And it ranks application links higher than other links when there's a hit.  Much like Spotlight on OS X which is accessed with a quick Option+Spacebar.

I do think that if Apple hadn't done it first Microsoft would have gotten there eventually.  It's not a game changing technology just a natural progression.