just wondering if there is a way to quickly hide.unhide all the files i have sitting on my desktop?

i was hoping i could open a clean slate 'workspace 2' but everything on workspace 1 shows up on all the other workspaces [except for items running in the panel]

hiding everything in a drawer added to the panel is not quite the 'feel' i want. something more in the line of a rolltop desktop that i can quickly close to hide the clutter when guests come over...
but still believe i should be able to create a new workspace with nothing on that desktop until i place files there.

all my searches are belong to no.luck!

Depending on your wdesktop, you may have or be able to add an icon to "hide desktop," which generally translates into "minimize all windows with one click."

As to why all your windows are showing on all your desktops, that is unusual behavior. Perhaps somewhere you've set them to be "sticky." If you tell us which desktop environment you are using, it would be most helpful.

This thread is remarkable similar; you might want to follow it: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...indows-114282/

re frankbell...If you tell us which desktop environment you are using, it would be most helpful....as you can see, my distro is mint 18, mate edition [what else do you need]

it is a fresh install, reformatted hdd, and no major tweaking on my part because i wanted to see how it looked 'out of the box'.

i think your comment about 'sticky' settings may be the source of my problem but for the life of me i cannot find where to set that. my instinct is to right click the desktop and make all my changes there...but alas...my instinct stincks...
/menu/controlcenter/look and feel/ or /preferences or /desktop settings or /appearance...nada
when creating another workspace with 'workspace switcher' there is no option for 'sticky'

most searches relate to actually hiding the desktop, what i would like is how to hide what is .on. the desktop [docs, ogg, images, folders, files in general, etc]

In the hope that it sets you along the right path, in dconf-editor: org->mate->desktop->background has the setting show-desktop-icons. Unchecking that option does exactly what you want it to do.

So, over to you to find a way to automate that process into a keystroke. Remember that dconf-editor works by manipulating text files that exist on the system, so if you can find the text file in question that contains that setting, it might be easier to do that way.

hydrurga...thanks for the dconf-editor suggestion
I had come across mention of it in my searches but since it was not included in my mint package i was reluctant to add it [and it took me a long time to figure out there was no space between the 'f' and the '-'].
but i decided to follow the why.not sidewalk [the sidewalk adjacent to the good intentions road] and gave it a try

unticking the show.desktop.icons does work but the trick seems to backfire on my setup...nice clean totally blank desktop [with background image] but no ability to right click...
tried it twice without reboot and same thing.

after closing dconf.editor i noticed this warning in the terminal:

** (dconf-editor:4391): WARNING **: dconf-schema.vala:348: Unknown property on <schema>, extends

it appears every time i run dconf-editor, before i do anything with it.
searching for that entire warning does not provide a quick answer.

am i using 'workspace switcher' for the wrong desired outcome?
even tried rearranging icons on each different workspace, but what i move in workspace 2 has same affect in all workspaces. [a sticky effect that i want to unstick?]

hope this makes some sense

Now that you're striding ardently along the why.not sidewalk, shall we try and sort out that dconf-editor warning before carrying on?

What the warning is saying is that one of the settings xml files has an incorrect property ("extends"). I don't get that warning on my Mint 18.1 setup, so it may be something that you've installed that I haven't.

To try and determine which xml file is to blame, can you type in on the command line:

grep 'extends' /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/*.xml

And paste the output here. Thanks.

here is the output:

$ grep 'extends' /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/*.xml
/usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/org.gnome.rhythmbox.gschema.xml: <schema id="org.gnome.rhythmbox.podcast-source" extends="org.gnome.rhythmbox.source">
/usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/org.gnome.rhythmbox.gschema.xml: <schema id="org.gnome.rhythmbox.plugins.iradio.source" extends="org.gnome.rhythmbox.source">

Thanks. Just to see if your copies of dconf-tools and dconf-editor are the same as mine, can you please post the output from:

dpkg -l dconf*

(that's the letter "el" after the hyphen)

more output: [should i be wrapping output in 'code' tags?]

$ dpkg -l dconf*
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Architecture Description
+++-=====================-===============-===============-===============================================
un dconf <none> <none> (no description available)
ii dconf-cli 0.24.0-2 amd64 simple configuration storage system - utilities
ii dconf-editor 3.18.2-1 amd64 simple configuration storage system - graphical
ii dconf-gsettings-backe 0.24.0-2 amd64 simple configuration storage system - GSettings
ii dconf-service 0.24.0-2 amd64 simple configuration storage system - D-Bus ser
un dconf-tools <none> <none> (no description available)

...end of output

note: just discovered copy/paste with the mouse buttons, as long as posted commands are error free it works like a charm. select with left mouse button/paste with centre/wheel button.

Good, we're singing from the same songsheet (although, purely for info, I installed dconf-editor by installing dconf-tools which is a transitional dummy package set up with "depends" relationships that automatically install dconf-editor and dconf-cli - this sort of dummy package set up for such a purpose is quite common and can be deleted once it has done its job, so you don't need it, you have everything you need).

Good to know about the mouse tip. I didn't know that, only using a laptop trackpad.

So, from reading around it seems that the "extends" property is a "recent" introduction, obviously more recent than the dconf we have installed and so our version of dconf can't understand it. Rhythmbox uses it in a couple of its xml data schemas, and the reason I'm not seeing it is that I don't have Rhythmbox installed, preferring Clementine. I would personally ignore the warning message as I don't think it should do any harm at all. But if you want, you could edit the schemas directly to remove the property, and thus the warning message, or we could delve into this further and try to determine why the Mint 18/18.1 repos don't have a copy of dconf that is up-to-date enough to handle "extends".

Yes, code tags if you want, but often it's not necessary if the output doesn't contain any characters or character strings that are going to be interpreted by the forum's software or as HTML.

I see what you mean by the lack of right-click on the desktop. A bit of an embuggerance but understandable to an extent. It's Caja, the file browser, that displays the desktop and handles the icons etc. Imagine if there were a situation that you had the icons turned off and then you right-click selected "Create folder" or "Create launcher" etc.? Caja wouldn't be able to do anything because it's been told not to display any icons. Rather than examining these incongruities and adopting a nuanced approach, Caja therefore seems to be taking a more straightforward approach and disabling its support for the desktop altogether.

Which of the right-click actions would you be using on a regular basis with the desktop icons switched off? If none, then we can just look at setting up a keystroke to toggle on/off the "Show desktop icons" setting, and you could just hit that keystroke to turn them on temporarily if you want to use the right-click functionality. Would that be a fair compromise?

hydrurga, i think we maybe getting sidetracked. I dont want to turn anything off, I just want to create a new workspace/desktop that is clean and uncluttered. after reading the help file in the workspace switcher panel, it might be that what i am looking for is not an available function of this program.

...and no mention of 'icons'. Just curious if other users have a cluttered desktop and create a new workspace, is that new, additional workspace just as cluttered. If so, then this is not what i need to pursue.

Check the UserGuide for specifics, but I thought workspaces was an Xfce "thing".
Alt+F2 and enter
Front and Center.

Habitual, you may be right but if i right click on the panel and select /add to panel, workspace switcher is an item you can add in mint 18.1

as for the user guide, the one i downloaded, english 17.3, latest available for mate edition, the 'find' option finds no mention at all of workspace.
the use guide is very basic and only gets you as far as installing the operating system and needs more in depth instruction on how to operate the system...i know...i am looking in the wrong place again...

Have ya tried
Right click on panel : add to panel : workspace switcher ?

and depending on it's implementation (YMMV) ... I use Ctrl+Alt+[RL]
to get the the "next" or "previous" desktop in Xfce/LM17.1

Any whos, there is a chance there is a .config file issue.
Short test for that is create a new user on the system and login as the new user then try
manipulating workspaces and see if the experiences compares to what you have now.

IF you do, it's a system issue,
IF you do not, it's a .config issue
in my experiences.
Exception would be Video Drivers, I guess.
Compositing...something...

Good Luck.
You could also install the Wonderful mint-meta-xfce package and reboot.
ON the graphical, Choose Session and select Xfce and enjoy the goodness.

LM 17.x Xfce is a Great Release.
I did not like 18.

habitual...
adding new user idea did not work out...same ting happins...
so, maybe not a .config issue and more of a system issue

and yes i have removed and added workspace switcher to the panel at least a few times
i have set it from 1 panel all the way through to 4 panels...

it would seem that i for one cannot populate other workspaces with different files and folders.
oh well...time to get distracted by another brainy idea