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I rarely ever see my desktop, because apps are usually maximized. Doesn't everybody do that? What kind of apps did people use back in the day when desktops weren't hidden all the time?

Maybe the idea was to occasionally quit apps and open other ones, not to keep them all open at the same time?

> What kind of apps did people use back in the day when desktops weren't hidden all the time?

Emacs to the left and one xterm window in the bottom right corner.

... with xclock top center.

Well with your live stats and feed plugin running transparently over the desktop and Winamp taking up non-rectangular space, it was critical to consider a desktop peeking through.

Zoomed, not maximized. Windows are sized only as large as they need to be. You can drag and drop between windows/apps, for example dragging to the trash can on the desktop. I think full screen is excellent for a few consumer apps like presentation/slide show, watching shows/movies and playing games. It's definitely a preference as I don't like tabs/MDI, snapping windows, and windows that consume screen space.

Not sure about back in the day, but what I use is one or more terminal windows at 80 chars width, so that's rarely more than 50% of the screen. I regularly use only one large app, the browser, but I don't keep it maximized if I don't need it, because then it's just visual noise.

Sometimes I'll find myself feeling cluttered and confused while working, and I'll minimize or close everything, and reopen only the stuff I need at that time, and a feeling of ease will wash over, a bit like exhaling after holding your breath.

I'm coming off peculiarly sensitive to distraction, because it's true. I wouldn't say I'm ADD, but I'd definitely say that as far as I can tell the casual stimuli bombardmant affects me more than most people I encounter. At the same time, I think that these days everyone is susceptible to sensory overexcitation.

I personally like desktop icons because it’s a tool. It’s my working directory, where I put files and order and stack them. Disks are shown there, as they too are temporary things that I currently do things with. Like a real desktop!

Maybe I should just mount the desktop folder in RAM.

I do agree with the solid colour as background. The working files are my markup. I’d suggest maybe using #808080 instead, or a colour like I do. Just a bit more pleasant in my experience.

> You'd be surprised just how much more organized and productive file system and shortcut usage gets if you turn off desktop icons.

The hundreds of files in my ~ strongly disagree.

Yikes! I can't imagine ever saving something directly to ~.

How about the 30 or so applications I have that save to ~/.something?

Actually I put a lot of statically linked apps on ~/Applications. This way if I need to move machines most of what I need is in ~ along with my data and config.

Well, I meant anything not starting with a dot. ;) Things I am saving I generally want to be able to see. But I wish all that crap would keep itself to .config where it belongs too, and I do what I can to keep those who can't play nicely in the sandbox off my system.

> Both are a bad idea

AKA, "I don't like it."

For me, a pure black background is the enemy; because macOS doesn't have window borders, only shadows, it's necessary to have some contrast to differentiate between the edges of windows with dark content or dark-themed windows and the background.

In that case, a good wallpaper is just as functional as a plain background, if not more; I usually pick my wallpapers based on contrast with my typically-displayed windows and the usual colours of their content.

Besides which, functionality and aesthetics aren't mutually exclusive.

I had desktop icons off for a while too. And I found myself a lot more productive with organized folders on my desktop. It's much nicer to lay things out spatially than in a flat list in your home folder.

I usually only ever see a sliver of my wallpaper in between the gaps of my i3-gaps windows. I think at this point it's less of a wallpaper and more of a texture for my window borders.