However, Gnome likes to place all these “handy” icons on the desktop that invade my cleanliness. And depending on what hard drives I have plugged in, SD cards, and mounted NFS drives, it easily becomes a Where’s Waldo issue!

Here is a tip to take your desktop from this:

to this:

In a terminal, enter:

gconf-editor

Similar to Windows Registry Editor, navigate to get to /apps/nautilus/desktop

Check or uncheck the items you do or don’t want to see on the desktop. Feel free to Bookmark the location for faster access so you can unhide those pesky devils when you need them the most.

Close the program and voila!