moving files from desktop to a nautilus window does nothing

[dundir]

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

Dragging files from the desktop to a nautilus window folder doesn't move, copy or perform any action. The animation upon releasing the click goes back to the files original location.

Drag and Drop is broken.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: nautilus 1:3.36.1.1-1ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-26.30-generic 5.4.30
Uname: Linux 5.4.0-26-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Sat Apr 25 20:46:04 2020
GsettingsChanges:

InstallationDate: Installed on 2020-04-26 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS "Focal Fossa" - Release amd64 (20200423)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: nautilus
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
usr_lib_nautilus:

[dundir (dundir)]

hotkeys that would normally trigger a prompt such as the delete button when a file is selected are also not working for files located on the desktop.

[dundir (dundir)]

In addition to this bug, as an FYI to save time; the previous workaround many people follow is installing nemo and setting it as the default for desktop icons. This no longer works.

"gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background show-desktop-icons false", is ignored.

The desktop icon functionality seems to now to be included in what are called mode extensions which a user cannot disable easily. No dconf key value is exposed for disabling desktop icons. It seems gnome-session needs to be installed and then extensions built up from there without desktop-icons as referenced.

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/no-desktop-icons-already-arrived-in-19-04/9295/29
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/merge_requests/1

To clean up some of the mess one can do:

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.desktop-icons

for the values "show-trash", and "show-home" which will remove some of the clutter if one has installed nemo as a workaround; but files are still shown (but not interactable) with no simple way of disabling it.

[dundir (dundir)]

After grokking the gnome documentation and poking around the filesystem some more, there appears to be an undocumented way to disable the desktop-icons extension to fix the workaround.

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 allows nemo to provide desktop icons and drag/drop functionality that was previously non-functional.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 1813441, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.

[dundir (dundir)]

@Sebastien, thank you for pointing out the bug was a duplicate. I've posted my workaround in the linked bug since the workaround I found is better than the current workaround.

Additionally, I really don't have the words to describe my disbelief that this regression actually made it into an LTS release. Its been a known issue for longer than a year before the release; and a problem in 19.04, 19.10, and now 20.04 LTS.

Most desktop users will immediately feel the pain of being unable to drag and drop, delete files or other inconveniences which will add up cumulatively every time they want to do something up until they find a solution, or decide its not worth it and go with another distro.

Following the commonly indexed posts on google they'll immediately get stuck when gsettings for disabling desktop icons fails since launchpad isn't indexed.

I like some of the changes in 20.04 but properly working desktop icons has been a required productivity expectation in any OS that's been around since the 90s regardless of what some people think.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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