Ubuntu

removing icons from the desktop

Asked by fraterchaos

ok, this may seem like a stupid question, but is there a way to remove the hard drive icons from ym desktop? I only have two of them, both for fat32 format drives, no other drives or volumes show up, nor do the CDRW or Floppy.

I realize that the main ubuntu drive, the CDRW and Floppy probably should be there too, but I don't really care that they aren't.

What I would like, is to have NO icons on my desktop. But I can't move them, can't delete them, and wouldn't really want to try deleting them from the desktop because that might delete the entire drive(s) from the system. All I want is to get rid of the icons.

I tried looking in the desktop folder, but it lists as empty. (I already moved any prgram link icons to a folder to remove them from the desktop). I tried setting the "show hidden" and still, the desktop folder appears as empty.

Basically, I'm just hoping there is some way to remove the icons without affecting the drives/volumes they represent...

Thanks.

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Solved
For:
Ubuntu Edit question
Assignee:
No assignee Edit question
Solved by:
Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄
Solved:
Last query:
Last reply:
Revision history for this message
Best Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey) said : 		#1

Yes, this isn't too difficult to do. Press ALT+F2 and in the "Run application" dialog type the following command then click "Run".

gconf-editor

Then navigate on the left to Apps --> Nautilus --> Desktop and you will find an option called "volumes_visible". Switch that off. You'll note the change will take effect immediately. You can try toggling it on and off to show it working.

Revision history for this message
fraterchaos (fraterchaos) said : 		#2

That did the trick, thanks very much.

Again, I want to express my admiration of the ubuntu
support service. Having dealt with many software
publishers in the past,, and even having worked in the
telephone tech support industry, I must say that
ubuntu has some of the best tech support I have ever
seen. Keep up the great work.

____________________________________________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta.
http://new.mail.yahoo.com

Revision history for this message
fraterchaos (fraterchaos) said : 		#3

User confirmed that the request is solved.

Revision history for this message
Wladston Viana (wladston) said : 		#4

Is it possible to remove only the HDs, while still showing the removable devices, like pen-drives and CD/DVD's ?

Also, maybe it would be interesting to make this future more acessible ? (like a "hide from desktop" option on the icon properties ?)

Revision history for this message
Deeemster (deeemster) said : 		#5

You can also go into gconf-editor

go to desktop --> gnome--> connected server

select the one you want to remove and change the name to include a period as the first character. This hides it from the desktop but keeps it listed in "Places" This works for network shares, I haven't tried for other items.

Revision history for this message
Mark (mark-osborne1) said : 		#6

I too had this problem, so thanks for the solution.