Can no longer drag and drop files between desktop and applications

[Jonathan Kamens]

In releases before 19.04, you could drag and drop files from the desktop into applications.

This no longer works.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 19.04
Package: gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons 19.01-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.18.0-13.14-generic 4.18.17
Uname: Linux 4.18.0-13-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.10-0ubuntu19
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Sat Jan 26 21:47:14 2019
InstallationDate: Installed on 2019-01-02 (24 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.10 "Cosmic Cuttlefish" - Release amd64 (20181017.3)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to disco on 2019-01-21 (5 days ago)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks, that's known upstream (https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/ShellExtensions/desktop-icons/)

[Jonathan Kamens (jik)]

I think you mean to link this to https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/ShellExtensions/desktop-icons/issues/29?

I question your designation of this as a "Low" importance issue. This is going to be a huge deal for people when 19.04 is released if it's not fixed by then.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Let's see how much of a deal that is, you can still dnd from a nautilus view on the desktop or double click on the file so it's easy to workaround...

[Jonathan Kamens (jik)]

>you can still dnd from a nautilus view on the desktop

Right, because it's not like the reason why I put files on my Desktop is because I use them often and want to be able to open quickly, or like having to open a Nautilus window, click on Desktop, and then double-click on the file to open it is slower than just being able to open the file directly on the desktop. That's definitely not a stupid usability regression that anyone who keeps files on their desktops is going to notice right away.

>or double click on the file so it's easy to workaround...

Except that I frequently want to open files (images, text files) with something other than the default application, and double-clicking doesn't do that, and another thing that's missing from the extension is the "Open with other application" right-click menu command (https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/ShellExtensions/desktop-icons/issues/32).

As one of my friends commented when I told him about all the absurd regressions introduced by ripping this code out of Nautilus and moving it to an incompletely implemented GNOME shell extension: #ThisIsWhyIUseKDE

Frankly, I'm just about ready to switch myself. The penchant of GNOME's developers for regressing functionality because they don't seem to understand how people actually use their software is a long-standing, incredibly frustrating problem.

[Fedon Kadifeli (fedkad)]

This problem persists in the released version of Ubuntu 19.04:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1136203/drag-and-drop-functionality-no-longer-working-after-upgrade-to-19-04

[Panoramix (panoramix-carlos)]

nautilus is the problem. when I replaced nautilus with nemo everything works correctly

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Would be worth report to nautilus upstream then

[Tom Reynolds (tomreyn)]

Possible duplicates: #1822254 #858913

[Emanuele (emanuc)]

Being able to move Applications from the Menu to the desktop or move documents from the file manager to the desktop is a function that is required by many users, it is a feature that any OS and Linux Desktop has, for years that I use my PC for the first time. it's such a limit, and only GNOME-Shell has it.
Is there anyone working on it or is there a plan to get it?

[Efthimios Chaskaris (echaskaris)]

Applies to 19.10 as well

[sami (miaousami)]

Applies to 20.04.

Is there at least any kind of workaround?
This is quite annoying.

[sami (miaousami)]

Here is a workaround for ubuntu 20.04:
    1. remove gnome extension `sudo rm -r /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/desktop-icons@csoriano/`
    2. install nemo: see https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/issues/158#alternative-solution and replace `dnf` with `apt`.

Current gnome desktop-icons extension is useless because you just can't interact with icons. I really don't get it how it came into an LTS release... :-(

Linked bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons/+bug/1868924

[dundir (dundir)]

I didn't realize my bug was a duplicate (https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1875125).

This is a big issue for desktop users, I almost rolled back immediately.
I'll still be rolling back due to other bugs I've found since Friday, but in the meantime I did find a slightly better way of working around the issue for 20.04 which I had posted in my bug post. I'll repost it here:

In /usr/share/gnome-shell/modes/ there is a json file ubuntu.json. It has a list of enabled extensions one of which is the desktop-icons extension. It looks like this:

{
    "parentMode": "user",
    "stylesheetName": "Yaru/gnome-shell.css",
    "themeResourceName": "theme/Yaru/gnome-shell-theme.gresource",
    "debugFlags": ["backtrace-crashes-all"],
    "enabledExtensions": ["<email address hidden>", "<email address hidden>", "desktop-icons@csoriano"]
}

Editing ubuntu.json and removing the entry and extra comma for desktop-icons, disables the extension from a single point. After that working around the issue using nemo provides desktop icons, delete hotkeys, and drag/drop functionality that was previously non-functional.

[ooshlablu (ooshlablu)]

For what it's worth, this also prevents icons from working with multiple dock applications in the gnome-flashback session: cairo-dock, docky, avant window navigator. The launchers are created, but just show up with "?" icons.

[Carlos García (carlosgarciaq)]

Confirmed, happening to me as well in Ubuntu 20.04... I cannot understand why you think the importance of this is "Low" or "Wishlist"... It looks to me quite serious, the desktop is used every day and most people are used to this functionality, which is uniform across the system... but not in the desktop now.

It makes ubuntu look quite bad, really.

[Moritz (mostu)]

I agree with Carlos Garcia.

This is a functionality that everyone expects to work out of the box today.

It is frustrating to see that in every Ubuntu release something like this comes up. Another example making ubuntu look bad: I also had to add the "show desktop" icon manually to the system today. Wtf.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

We are somewhat trapped. It's a choice between using the old version of nautilus forever with bugs and incompatibilities, or the new version of nautilus without desktop support. Those are not good choices but they are all we have now. This is not a problem created by, or unique to Ubuntu.

Indeed comment #14 links to the *official* recommended workaround.

[Salim B (salim-b)]

> We are somewhat trapped. It's a choice between using the old version of nautilus forever with bugs and incompatibilities, or the new version of nautilus without desktop support. Those are not good choices but they are all we have now. This is not a problem created by, or unique to Ubuntu.

That seems not quite accurate. Of course, using the whole GNOME 3 desktop incl. latest Nautilus is the way to go for Ubuntu. The absence of proper "desktop support" is unfortunate. Also sad: The current state of the official replacement for Nautilus' desktop support, the GNOME Shell extension "Desktop Icons", is pretty premature (still limited keyboard support etc.).

BUT!

1. Why does Ubuntu force its users to stick with an outdated version of the GNOME Shell extension "Desktop Icons"? Ubuntu ships the extension via the DEB package `gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons` which *cannot* be removed without also removing the packages `ubuntu-desktop` and `ubuntu-desktop-minimal`. This completely sucks. Because of the pre-installed extension DEB package, one cannot install/update the latest upstream version of the extension from https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1465/desktop-icons/

2. Why doesn't Canonical assign some of its developer ressources to improving the "Desktop Icons" extension? This would not only benefit The Ubuntu ecosystem but every Linux distro shipping the GNOME 3 desktop. The sources are found here: https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/ShellExtensions/desktop-icons

---

For the time being, Ubuntu users can use the following workaround to get the latest version of the "Desktop Icons" extension which already brings limited drag-and-drop support and keyboard support:

Ensure you have 7-Zip, Git and Meson installed (e.g. via the Debian packages `p7zip`, `git` and `meson`), then run the following in a terminal to update the extension:

cd /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions

# backup the DEB-packaged extension if not already done before and delete it
if [ ! -s desktop-icons_bckp.7z ] ; then sudo 7z a desktop-icons_bckp.7z desktop-icons@csoriano/* ; fi
rm -R desktop-icons@csoriano

# build and copy the extension from git master branch
git clone <email address hidden>:World/ShellExtensions/desktop-icons.git ~/desktop-icons
cd ~/desktop-icons
./export-zip.sh
unzip <email address hidden> -d desktop-icons@csoriano
sudo mv desktop-icons@csoriano /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/

# clean up
rm -R ~/desktop-icons

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

1. That is bug 1832407 you are describing. Although you don't actually need to be able to remove the extension package in order to replace it. Installing any extension locally for your own account will override the system version.

2. Canonical does contribute to desktop-icons when we have time.

[Hai NGUYEN VAN (psaxl)]

A bit more explanation can be found here: https://didrocks.fr/2018/01/23/welcome-to-the-ubuntu-bionic-age-nautilus-a-lts-and-desktop-icons

However, I am extremely disappointed. Ubuntu addresses general public, not only nerds who don't make use of desktop icons.

[Norbert (nrbrtx)]

@Hai NGUYEN VAN (psaxl)

The solution was already given at https://askubuntu.com/a/1233026/66509 - simply remove GNOME Shell and install MATE instead. Or Xfce, or KDE.

[Paddy Landau (paddy-landau)]

The updated Desktop Icons, "Desktop Icons NG (DING)" (by the same author), fixes these problems.

Canonical could make its life easier by simply replacing the old Desktop Icons with the new Desktop Icons NG (DING).

Desktop Icons:
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1465/desktop-icons/

Desktop Icons NB (DING):
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/2087/desktop-icons-ng-ding/

[Norbert (nrbrtx)]

This functionality should exist without damn extensions. It is essential
functionality of normal feature-rich desktop.

Shame on GNOME!
Normal traditional users should use MATE, KDE or Xfce instead of supporting
GNOME illness.

[Tero Gusto (tero-gusto)]

I was quite surprised to find the icons on the Desktop not navigable with arrow keys. Also, I couldn't cut and paste files to and from the Desktop.

For many years, I have always replaced Nautilus with Nemo, it's so much more flexible. I managed to get the Desktop in a great state using Nemo, following the steps outlined here:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1066752/how-to-set-nemo-as-the-default-file-manager-in-ubuntu-18-04/1173861#1173861

I would suggest the Ubuntu software managers to replace Nautilus with Nemo, it seems like the logical choice, by far.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

> I was quite surprised to find the icons on the Desktop not navigable with arrow keys.

That's bug 1855711.

> Also, I couldn't cut and paste files to and from the Desktop.

That's bug 1857014.

[Adam Niedling (krychek)]

You can't move around multiple icons on the desktop, only one by one.
What's the bug number for that?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

That appears to be bug 1886322.

[Adam Niedling (krychek)]

How about Ubuntu is not asking any "are you sure" questions when I delete (del or shift+del) something from the desktop?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

> How about Ubuntu is not asking any "are you sure" questions when I delete (del or shift+del) something from the desktop?

Please open a new bug for that by running:

  ubuntu-bug gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons

[Adam Niedling (krychek)]

I did it. Bug 1901150.

[Luna Jernberg (bittinubuntu)]

Hangs on Hirsute too :(
@seb128
did try now

[Paddy Landau (paddy-landau)]

I have created Bug #1906420 which, if implemented, will solve this and other bugs.

Please visit and "star" it (the green writing at the top) if you agree with it.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons/+bug/1906420

[Leigh Mathieson (leighmathieson)]

Really daft regression, makes you wonder what other functionality taken for granted is missing you don't know about..

[Vladislav K. Valtchev (vvaltchev)]

Guys, this is a *BRUTAL* regression. It's NOT acceptable to break the desktop experience like that in a LTS release because "the legacy code was unmaintainable". Either replace the legacy code with a mature, well-written extension which works *exactly* the same way, or continue to maintain the old dirty (whatever) code, until you have a VALID replacement.

You're *under-estimating* the impact of such a bug. Desktop icons have been "a thing" for the last 30 years or so and are the first thing any user sees. And I'm not talking only about non-technical people: I'm talking about people like me that have been using Linux since 1998. Now, not only arrow keys and drag'n'drop don't work, but even just creating or deleting a file on the desktop causes an ugly refresh. Sometimes, just moving an icon causes the whole gnome shell to crash.

I was hoping this bug would be fixed ASAP after the 20.04 release or, at most, for the 20.10 release, but still nothing. And, no, I don't wanna use dirty workarounds which will break on upgrade. I'd like an officially-supported fix.

For instabilities like these "the world" stopped using KDE 4 and switched to GNOME. Even MANY years later now, with KDE perfectly stable etc., people still use GNOME. Do you really want to loose the desktop segment? People will stop using Ubuntu for things like that.

This bug's "Importance" should be: "VERY HIGH", not "Medium".

[Jonathan Kamens (jik)]

Three notes:

1. Ubuntu has addressed this in 21.04 by shipping gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons-ng by default.

2. Note that you can fix this yourself in any earlier version of Ubuntu by installing that extension directly from extensions.gnome.org ( https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/2087/desktop-icons-ng-ding/ ) and disabling the older version shipped with Ubuntu.

3. This is GNOME's fault, not Ubuntu's fault, so bitching at Ubuntu about it is not helpful or useful. It's not practical for Ubuntu to keep using obsolete versions of GNOME when the GNOME developers introduce regressions like this, and it's not feasible for Ubuntu to fix all of the regressions that the GNOME developers introduce.

[Vladislav K. Valtchev (vvaltchev)]

Hi Jonathan,

I'm happy to start a dialogue about this issue.

1. It's great to hear that the problem will be fixed in 21.04. Maybe a backport to the 20.04 LTS should be considered as well?

2. I know, I don't have problems with fixing things by myself, per se. I'm irritated that this was not a "corner case" that a few will people will even notice. It's a "show stopper" bug. I'm criticizing the *decision making* here.

3. Yes, I realize that's GNOME's fault. So, the solution was to simply stick to the older version of GNOME, wasn't it? It's a BAD idea to upgrade to the latest version of XYZ, when it's broken, in particular when we're talking about an LTS release, that's supposed to be super-stable. That's simply *bad judgement*. Of course Canonical cannot fix every GNOME bug, I totally agree. I'm a very practical person. Just, don't upgrade the package; it's simple as that. A Linux distribution maintainers' main job is choose carefully which version each software package to include in the distro. The typical questions are: "is the package XYZ stable enough for our release?", "shall we use libxyz 1.23 instead of libxyz 1.22 to fix the problem PR123, but risking to break something else?".

Also, did "desktop-icons-ng-ding" exist in 2020 before the release of the LTS? Not a rhetorical question, I honestly don't know. If it did, than the LTS should have included it. Otherwise, the LTS should have just used the older version of GNOME. No matter how you put it, no technical reason justifies breaking this way the user interface. Again, if it were something affecting < 1% of the users, I would have understood. But not in this case. It's not a glitch hidden somewhere, it's one of the first things people notice after installing Ubuntu. I noticed it in a matter of minutes. It's *NOT* a problem of resources, it's a decision-making problem.

Vlad

[Jonathan Kamens (jik)]

Claiming that Ubuntu could simply have stuck with the previous version of GNOME when shipping the LTS release is failing to see the forest for the trees. Many factors go into the decision of what version of a critical package like GNOME to put in a release. Ubuntu looked at all of those factors and made the decision they did. Unless you were involved in that discussion or have done an analysis similar to theirs, you are in no position to second-guess their decision; you simply are not considering even a small fraction of the information they considered when making it.

Desktop Icons NG was around when 20.04 shipped, though it probably wasn't complete, tested, or stable enough to ship with an LTS release. There have been significant changes since 20.04 shipped.

[Vladislav K. Valtchev (vvaltchev)]

You're failing to understand the concept of "show-stopper" bug, also known as "ship-stopper".
The severity of such a bug is so big, that the whole release a product must be postponed, until the bug is fixed. Bugs of this kind are ones that substantially compromise the usability of a product. For example, a bug in a browser's rendering engine that doesn't allow a single major website (social networks, search engines etc.) to render correctly. Millions of people won't use that browser because of that. Another example? A GCC bug that doesn't allow the Linux kernel to compile or, even worse, compiles but generates incorrect instructions and the kernel doesn't boot. Even if that C compiler had a TON of new and cool features and it was 200% faster than its predecessor, would you allow it to be released knowing the you cannot compile Linux? I wouldn't, never.

Most of the time, we make trade-offs, both in software development and in release management as well. For example? We've fixed 100 bugs at the price of introducing 5 new ones. That's fine, generally. BUT, some bugs are critical and cannot even be put in the equation. I don't need the whole "decision tree" for that. Such bugs, have priority above everything else combined. The 10,000 new features of KDE 4 were worthless, compared to the fact that it was not stable and crashed the whole time. I wanted so much to use it at the time, because it was so cool and visually pleasing. But, at the end I gave up because of its instability and switched to GNOME.
A car is *worthless* if its breaking system doesn't work. A compromise can be made when the breaking system is relatively worse than the one in the previous model, but it's still working, it's still doing an acceptable job.

So, how to decide which bugs are show-stoppers? Well, there are user experience people, product managers, VPs etc, but ultimately, such a decision is SUBJECTIVE. I have no "mathematical proof" that this was a show-stopper bug, neither do you that this wasn't. I expressed my opinion, trying to make the Ubuntu leadership to reconsider such decision making. Maybe I failed, maybe I didn't. But if nobody makes criticism, it's almost impossible for the leadership to get a feedback and improve its decision-making. At the end, given users' feedback, I hope Ubuntu leaders will ask themselves: "was that the right call to make?". Maybe, just maybe, the next time they'll be more conservative when releasing an LTS.

[dundir (dundir)]

Vlad, honestly, I don't see this getting fixed anytime soon, this has
been an issue since a late revision of 18.10/19.04 (~2018).

Pinning is a time-tested solution for regressions but it does come with
overhead, especially when the issue is actually a dependency of a core
system component (nautilus).

It would have been better if Canonical could have gotten in front of the
issue when it was first fresh (before the broken expectations). Its
always better to under-promise expectations than to over-promise. At
this point, not meeting expectations, and the failure to act has people
looking for alternatives (myself included).

At this point I don't think the feedback canonical is getting regarding
changes is working in a way that can let them do better.

N.

On 3/13/21 9:34 AM, Jonathan Kamens wrote:

> Claiming that Ubuntu could simply have stuck with the previous version
> of GNOME when shipping the LTS release is failing to see the forest for
> the trees. Many factors go into the decision of what version of a
> critical package like GNOME to put in a release. Ubuntu looked at all of
> those factors and made the decision they did. Unless you were involved
> in that discussion or have done an analysis similar to theirs, you are
> in no position to second-guess their decision; you simply are not
> considering even a small fraction of the information they considered
> when making it.
>
> Desktop Icons NG was around when 20.04 shipped, though it probably
> wasn't complete, tested, or stable enough to ship with an LTS release.
> There have been significant changes since 20.04 shipped.
>

[Vladislav K. Valtchev (vvaltchev)]

@dundir Maybe you're right, I don't know.
I just tried to do what I believed is best for Ubuntu, the distro I've been using since 2008 or so: to speak out giving my feedback, hoping it will be heard by the right people. If things won't change I'll look elsewhere, clearly.

[Jonathan Kamens (jik)]

I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking time out of what I'm sure is a very busy schedule to educate poor little me, who is so ignorant that I've only been working on open source and commercial software for over 30 years and using Linux since the early days of Slackware and at one point had submitted more Linux bug reports to Red Hat than literally any other account in bugzilla, about what a "show-stopper" bug is. Truly, I am enlightened.

[Luna Jernberg (bittinubuntu)]

This will be fixed in 21.04: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2021/03/ding-ubuntu-21-04-fixes-my-biggest-pet-peeve

[Jonathan Kamens (jik)]

Can you please read what other people have said before commenting.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Reverting incorrect bug status. Or are you working on that @Luna?

[Luna Jernberg (bittinubuntu)]

nope, sorry

[Andres Leon (aleon1220)]

Hi everyone,
i worked for a while in an OSS called Spinnaker.io. I understand is annoying to deal with so many approaches and personalities.

This message is just to say thank you for all the support to the ubuntu distro.

I really like using ubuntu and yes there are changes and improvements but to me is a good challenge to learn something new and try something else.

Kepp up the good work
God bless

[Tom (tparle)]

I confirm the bug is still present (and very annoying, making me lose a lot of time) on Ubuntu 21.10.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

This bug is already closed for 21.10 and I can confirm it definitely works there. Please open a new bug if you have any problems with 21.10.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

If you mean copy/paste (not drag and drop) then that is bug 1948008.