No "Are you sure?" question when deleting something from Desktop

[Adam Niedling]

There isn't any "Are you sure?" question when deleting (del OR shift+del) something from Desktop.

Was happening in 20.04 and now in 20.10 too.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.10
Package: gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons 20.04.0+git20200908-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.8.0-25.26-generic 5.8.14
Uname: Linux 5.8.0-25-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu50
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Fri Oct 23 10:08:44 2020
InstallationDate: Installed on 2019-12-19 (308 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 19.10 "Eoan Ermine" - Release amd64 (20191017)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=hu_HU.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to groovy on 2020-10-23 (0 days ago)

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Confirmed, but now that I think about it, this might be intentional. Because you can always get deleted files back from the Recycling Bin / Trash, there's not strictly any need to prompt the user in the first place.

[Adam Dingle (adam-yorba)]

Note that Nautilus does not ask "Are you sure?" when you delete a file. Instead, it deletes the file immediately, and displays a notification saying that the file was deleted, along with an Undo button.

So if the goal is for the desktop to behave like Nautilus, then the desktop should not ask "Are you sure?" either.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Please report the issue to the developer at:

  https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/ShellExtensions/desktop-icons/-/issues

and then tell us the new issue ID.

[Adam Niedling (krychek)]

There is no Recycle Bin when pressing Shift+Del. The file just goes away without confirmation.
And Nautilus does ask you when pressing Shift+Del. So should the Desktop.

When pressing just Del then the Desktop should give the option to Undo it. If you want the same behaviour as Nautilus.

[Paddy Landau (paddy-landau)]

I'm using Ubuntu 20.04.
On my desktop, Delete (which moves the item to the Recycling bin) just deletes it.
Shift+Delete (which deletes the item permanently) does ask.

To me, this is correct behaviour and shouldn't change.

But...

I don't know if this has anything to do with the extension that is used to control the desktop. In Ubuntu, the default is the broken "Desktop Icons" [1], which should be replaced with the fixed "Desktop Icons NG (DING)" [2] (by the same author).

I have uninstalled Desktop Icons and installed Desktop Icons NG (DING). Thus, my desktop's behaviour might differ from the standard.

See Bug #1813441 comment 24

[1] https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1465/desktop-icons/
[2] https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/2087/desktop-icons-ng-ding/

[Adam Niedling (krychek)]

https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/ShellExtensions/desktop-icons/-/issues/223

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

OK upstream have closed the bug with no intention to fix it because they don't think it's a bug. And I agree...

Del goes straight to the trash. So you can recover such files and there's no need for a prompt.

Shift+Del also goes straight to the trash. So you can recover such files and there's no need for a prompt. This is because Shift+Del is not implemented yet (bug 1825415). When Shift+Del is implemented for bug 1825415 it will be necessary to include an "Are you sure?" dialog with that. But not before then.

[Adam Niedling (krychek)]

I didn't about that bug.
But how come that it was implemented in 18.04 and it's not implemented in 20.04?

[Adam Niedling (krychek)]

"The desktop is not handled by nautilus anymore, that's a bug in the new gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons component."

What was the point of this change? Now everything has to be implemented again and there are a bunch of new bugs in the Desktop.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

I think most of us agree it was an undesirable change. It was made by the upstream developers a couple of years ago now. The reasoning is detailed in https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/-/issues/158

We can't just reintroduce nautilus-desktop either. The change was huge, a long time ago (so can't just be reversed) and there's nobody to support it.

But I totally agree nautilus-desktop was better than gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons.

[Adam Dingle (adam-yorba)]

Adam Niedling: That's a long story. Very briefly, about 2 years ago the GNOME project, which develops Nautilus, decided to remove support for desktop icons from Nautilus, controversially:

  https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/01/gnome-desktop-icons-removed-3-28

Ubuntu still wants desktop icons, so it needs to implement them in some other way, and so it uses the Desktop Icons shell extension.

As Paddy mentioned above, there is a newer version of Desktop Icons called Desktop Icons NG, which is under active development:

  https://gitlab.com/rastersoft/desktop-icons-ng

I myself run Desktop Icons NG too. It is still a long way from having all the functionality of Nautilus, but it is slowly getting better.

I also hope that Ubuntu will switch to Desktop Icons NG sooner or later.

[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

[Adam Niedling (krychek)]

This is fixed in Ubuntu 21.04. It asks when shift+del-ing something from the desktop.