Home Directory as the Desktop?

[Dazed_75]

What genius decided that the users home directory should also BE the [gnome]
Desktop?  Doing so means that every file and directory in a users home
directory appears on the Desktop.  One does not notice it on finishing the
install because there are no visible files there.  Makes me wonder how many
people we did installs for at the installfest are now being bothered by this
weird setup.

I do not know how widespread this is but I found a number of discussions
about it on the web.  A scratch install of ubuntu 9.04 seems to do this
though an upgrade does not.  I THINK the change is related to the new
install having a ~/.config/ that looks like:

# This file is written by xdg-user-dirs-update
> # If you want to change or add directories, just edit the line you're
> # interested in. All local changes will be retained on the next run
> # Format is XDG_xxx_DIR="$HOME/yyy", where yyy is a shell-escaped
> # homedir-relative path, or XDG_xxx_DIR="/yyy", where /yyy is an
> # absolute path. No other format is supported.
> #
> XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/"
> XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/"
> XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/"
> XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/"
> XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/"
> XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/"
> XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/"
> XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/"

instead of

> ---<snip>---
> #
> XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
> XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
> XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/Templates"
> XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/Public"
> XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Documents"
> XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/Music"
> XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Pictures"
> XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Videos"


I don't know how or why that happened, but I also noted the absence of
.bashrc and .profile which I thought were supposed to be made (copied from
/etc) by default for every user?  This almost makes me wonder if the change
was intentional or possibly poorly vetted.

Anyone have any inside info about this?
-- 
Dazed_75 a.k.a. Larry
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