Comment 20 for bug 1813441

> 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 Why does Ubuntu force its users to stick with an outdated version of the GNOME Shell extension "Desktop Icons"?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