From a user perspective, the difference between the Desktop and Folder containments is that Desktop shows no desktop icons even if you have placed files or folders in ~/Desktop, while Folder does. However there is an easy alternative: don't put anything in ~/Desktop. People who hate the concept of desktop files will be able to easily do that. In fact, most of them probably already have. Therefore, perhaps we can remove the UI toggle to switch between Desktop and Folder layouts, at least in Plasma Desktop. Other shells like PlaMo or Bigscreen might want to keep using Desktop so I guess we shouldn't delete it entirely. But for Plasma Desktop, I don't see the use case, and having a UI control to switch between them is an extra bit of UI that the user will have to figure out. I'd like to propose that we remove the UI to switch between them in Plasma Desktop, and instead always use a Folder View containment. People who hate desktop icons should just not put anything in ~/Desktop; problem solved.
[Found in last-24-hour search while looking for something else. CCing and commenting as I find it interesting.] Count me as one of the "hate desktop icons" users. Since the location's adjustable I'm not against it in general but some random thoughts as a live-git tester/user both pro and con. Evaluate their worth and proceed accordingly. =:^) * FWIW I use the "Desktop" dir as a "working" dir dumping ground for current downloads and (in a subdir) whatever else I might be working on, because it's not just icons on the desktop (which I don't want) but also a default central "Place", easily accessible from many apps including non-kde apps that don't necessarily have the "Places" flexibility that kde/plasma does. So while I (and others in the "hate" group) could of course simply point the plasma desktop to some other empty dir, the implications of desktop containment removal /are/ rather larger than comment #0 implied. * Of course this will trigger a bunch of hubbub in the community, likely a bunch of extra filed bugs, etc. It /will/ be seen (at best) by those affected as "change for change sake." Is it worth it? (It may be, I'm not the one to say, but the question should be considered given the predicted community view.) * Certainly eliminating the choice (since the location can be pointed at an empty dir in any case) will simplify things, changing the "plasma lost its settings again and I gotta reset from defaults" procedure from "switch to desktop containment before doing anything else or you'll lose the other changes", to "at your leasure, re-point the location to an empty dir", as well as the one-less-config-option simplification. That's a positive, but arguably less of one for me and others like me, because the required customization step will be changed, not eliminated. * Note that (presumably) the other shells don't have as high a usage as plasma-desktop. In particular, I suspect it's likely that most of your "live-git" (me) and beta-tester users are using the desktop shell. Thus, if the desktop containment is retained only for those other shells the highest cost (from the CI perspective at least) is likely to be in not catching any desktop-containment-specific bugs as quickly, potentially resulting in a worse experience for release users of the other shells. Given that the folder containment includes all the functionality anyway that may not be seen to be an issue, but if it is, it may be that the desktop containment needs either kept or dumped in its entirety, including for the other shells. Whether it's useful enough there to actually be required is something I can't evaluate, but much of the code simplification benefit will only occur if it's dumped entirely, and given the above cost factors of losing it, it may simply not be worth it to do part way.
I have tried hard to come up with arguments in favor of keeping the Desktop containment, as a user of the option, other then the cries of 'you are removing features!'. The only things I can come up with so far are: 1)... 2) The extra, unused context menus "cluttering" a minimal desktop While my initial reaction was "No!! Please, no!!", I can't really fault the logic, no matter how much I try, so I can only grasp at straws. Yes, there will be gripes and complaints, but I imagine very few.
This is now being discussed in https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-desktop/-/issues/68 now; let's continue the discussion there.