It may be a bad habit, but for years I have saved temporary files (stuff I don't intend to keep long & some work in progress) to my desktop, where I won't forget them & they are immediately available.
For years there was no problem - icons on the desktop stayed where they were.
Since 19.10 things have gone crazy (might have started with 19.04 but I can't check that now).
Nearly every time a new item is added or removed, some or all of the other items get reshuffled on the desk!
I raised this issue on Ubuntu Forum, with details & screenshots (PLEASE LOOK) here:
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2435768
I have run comparison tests, using SHA-verified Live USB stick versions of Ubuntu 18.04.3 & 19.10, which I suppose anybody else can duplicate.
My test was to successively "Save-as to desktop" 32 tiny LibO files called 01, 02, 03 etc in that order.
With 18.04.3, each item was positioned top-to-bottom in a column at left, then in the next columns to the right after each column was full.
Once positioned, no icon moved.
With 19.10, icons were positioned clustered top-left but new columns were started before previous columns were full.
Nearly every addition caused previous icons to be reshuffled.
Frequently the number of columns DIMINISHED when a new icon was added.
With 19.10, removing icons causes other items to reshuffle.
With 18.04.3, removing icons leaves a gap, which is filled by the next item added.
I think the behaviour of 18.04.3 is perfect & the behaviour of 19.10 is an unacceptable regression.
ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 19.10
Package: nautilus 1:3.34.1-1ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.3.0-29.31-generic 5.3.13
Uname: Linux 5.3.0-29-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu8.2
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Wed Jan 29 14:03:30 2020
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-10-23 (1923 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140722.2)
SourcePackage: nautilus
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
modified.conffile..etc.default.apport:
# set this to 0 to disable apport, or to 1 to enable it
# you can temporarily override this with
# sudo service apport start force_start=1
enabled=0
mtime.conffile..etc.default.apport: 2019-11-04T18:03:11.954726
usr_lib_nautilus:
Nautilus upstream decided to remove the handling of the desktop, a new component has been created to file some of the gaps and still provide that feature but it's incomplete compared to the old code. Reassigning to gnome-shell-