Unity is Missing a Show Desktop BUTTON

[Lonnie Lee Best]

Although Unity offers a keyboard-shortcut (super-D) as a means of "showing your desktop" (minimizing all windows at once), it does not provide a MOUSE-CLICKABLE-BUTTON, that Users have come to expect from their desktop.

Keyboard-shortcuts are efficient, but they are not intuitive for new users of Unity, and having a MOUSE-CLICKABLE-BUTTON is very convenient when you are mousing (without both hands on the keyboard).

Furthermore, (although some people think Window 7 doesn't have a show desktop button) Window 7 still provides a show-desktop-button; it is a small rectangle to the right of the clock. So I hope Windows 7's discreetness isn't what lead the Unity designers to think that there is some type of trend toward not having a show-desktop-BUTTON.

Unity's "Workspace Switcher" is helpful for locating the windows of running applications, but it doesn't not replace the functionality of a show-desktop-button in the event that your needing to quickly access a file or launcher that has been saved to the desktop itself.

Personally, I'd like to see a show-desktop-button added to the bottom of the Unity-Task-Bar.

However, another option for a mouse-click-way of showing the desktop (that is more elegant, but with more steps) is to add the "show desktop" option to the context menu of the Workspace Switcher.

This is something that could be quickly added before the 12.10 release ( http://www.ubuntu.com/community/countdown )! After that, more time can be given (later) to designing an elegant button for 13.04.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
Package: unity 6.8.0-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-17.28-generic 3.5.5
Uname: Linux 3.5.0-17-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
ApportVersion: 2.6.1-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
CompizPlugins: [core,composite,opengl,compiztoolbox,decor,vpswitch,snap,mousepoll,resize,place,move,wall,grid,regex,imgpng,session,gnomecompat,animation,fade,unitymtgrabhandles,workarounds,scale,expo,ezoom,unityshell]
Date: Wed Oct 17 11:20:47 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20120425)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: unity
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to quantal on 2012-10-04 (12 days ago)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[MC Return (mc-return)]

To add the Show Desktop Launcher icon to the Launcher you now need to:

- Edit the gsetting key "favorites" in com.canonical.Unity.Launcher
- Add a favorite named "unity://desktop-icon" there

You can use dconf-editor to do it. (sudo apt-get install dconf-tools)

Once you're done the key should look like this:

['application://ubiquity-gtkui.desktop', 'application://nautilus-home.desktop', 'application://firefox.desktop', 'application://libreoffice-writer.desktop', 'application://libreoffice-calc.desktop', 'application://libreoffice-impress.desktop', 'application://ubuntu-software-center.desktop', 'application://ubuntuone-installer.desktop', 'application://ubuntu-amazon-default.desktop', 'application://UbuntuOneMusiconeubuntucom.desktop', 'application://gnome-control-center.desktop', 'unity://running-apps', 'unity://expo-icon', 'unity://desktop-icon', 'unity://devices']

To enable/disable the Show Desktop Icon in the Switcher you need CCSM. (sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager)
You find a setting for it in the Ubuntu Unity Plugin.

[Lonnie Lee Best (launchpad-startport)]

Thank you.

The intent of this bug report is to propose that such configurations should be set automatically as part of the default installation of Ubuntu.

For those who don't want the show-desktop-button, customization could be as easy as selecting the "unlock from launcher" option (from the show-desktop-buttons context menu).

This seems more sensible than having new users install and configure dconf-tools and compizconfig-settings-manager (in order to add the show-desktop-button -- that they've come to expect from a desktop).

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

Thanks for the bug report. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 681348, so is being marked as such. Any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to report any other bugs you may find.