"Multicolumn" or "tiles", or even "list" icon view on desktop, in any DE?
 

This is something I don't understand not only why it's not widespread, but why it's virtually nonexistent.

In most file managers there are many possible "views", from detailed list to icons. I don't like icons that much not even on the desktop, but I'd think they're more acceptable if at least they could be displayed in a nicer manner, like "multicolumn view" of konqueror; that is, text beside icons.

In windows there is a small program that does that, it's called dcolorxp:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_O5Kz5881JO...ee_desktop.bmp



I guess that one may be able to get it with rox-filer + openbox or something, but in my case, I would prefer to have no desktop icons altogether in openbox.

But I'm still curious if that's possible in desktop environments such as KDE or Gnome. I tried to "hack" KDE's desktop configuration file, copying a line from konquerorrc, but it didn't work.

Works in Gnome. Can't say how it works in KDE because I don't have access to one now.

In Gnome you probably won't find this in the menus of Nautilus, or its settings dialog, but if you start up GConf Editor
and then navigate the tree view to /apps/nautilus/icon_view, you'll see a key called "labels_beside_icons" which is probably unchecked by default. Check that, and (in the ordinary icon view) your labels (filenames) should immediately jump to the side of the icon, just like in the image you linked.

Another way to see these things is to head to $HOME/.gconf/ where you'll find the tree. Like many others, this is one of those things that do exist but are not "advertised" -- Gnome, for example, looks fairly "simple" (that's what I like in it: no thousands of controls everywhere that are hardly ever used), but it doesn't mean it is. Having options is good, but having them all visible all the time usually isn't.

Hope this helps!

I think I may have been ambiguous, but I meant text besides icons (or an even smaller list) specifically for desktop icons. Within file managers these options are fairly common, and usually not too hidden (albeit sometimes "buggy" and need some work to make it stick). I'm making that clear because I had the impression that what you said would affect only nautilus file manager display, even though I didn't try to see if it would affect the desktop icons too.

I tried a little bit with Rox-filer as the "desktop manager" but apparently it hasn't this option either. I find it weird, because it seems to me something that the programmers have to do some extra work in order to disable, as it isn't disabled on the file manager mode (but I don't really know). And the fact that often Linux adepts brag a bit on how it is different from Windows just adds to that oddity.

All right, I had a wrong idea of what you were after -- sorry. My desktop didn't have icons on it, so I didn't realize that it didn't affect it, only other views. Nautilus does handle the "desktop" a little differently from other dirs, but mostly it's fixable; I tried a few settings in gconf, but none of them affected the desktop view, so I guess this isn't quite that easy.

It appears others have searched for this too (list view/text beside icons on desktop), and for Nautilus there seems to be at least one answer, mentioned in this thread. I didn't try it, but it says you'll need to touch some of the source code a little -- definitely too much work if you ask me. But according to a link of a screenshot it should work, so you might want to try it.

If you find an easier way to do it (especially in Gnome and/or KDE), do post it here, I'm interested.