Desktopfolder
Version: 1.0.5 Web: http://bit.ly/desktopfolder
One of this month’s HotPicks was Liquidshell, which is KDEspecific, so we decided to feature another similar program.
Desktopfolder is specific to ElementaryOS, or, to be more precise, to its Pantheon desktop. Purists can argue that Pantheon is also available for Arch and Fedora, but still the majority of users prefer to run it within its ‘home’ eOS.
Despite the fact that one of our test machines runs ElementaryOS and we use it frequently, it’s often hard to review stylish fancy apps from Elementary’s brand new AppCenter, simply because they are too ‘Elementary’ and doen’t provide enough features for a decent review.
Luckily, this isn’t the case for Desktopfolder, a cool addition to Pantheon that brings its desktop back to life. As you might know, the Pantheon desktop is intentionally empty, without any means to put files or icons on it. If you’re not happy with this state of affairs, Desktopfolder is the solution. This application creates floating panels that serve as containers. You can put various things inside it, including files, folders, launchers, images and more.
Desktopfolder provides enough settings to customise panels for different needs, so in the end you can have multiple panels of different types: a file container, a sticky note or an image frame. It works much like a basic set of plasmoids, only in this case it’s bound to the ElementaryOS tool set and written using Vala.
We really enjoyed messing with Desktopfolder panels, especially resizing, adding colour tags and dragging some content onto a panel.
The concept goes against ElementaryOS’ ideals, but this is Linux and we can still exercise our freedom of choice. Desktopfolder is an open source project that provides pre-built DEB packages. You can get it installed in just a few clicks via AppCenter. If you’re using Pantheon, don’t miss it!
“A cool addition to Pantheon that brings its desktop back to life!”