Personally I quite like the option of sidestepping it all by carrying on with the empty desktop model for this release, but if not would favour moving the toolbox top right in kubuntu.

After all, we are wanting in kubuntu to give a good desktop experience out of the box by default, and are not obliged to stick with the KDE/plasma default choices/code.

For me personally, I have no preference as I will customise my desktop how I want regardless of these changes.

However, leaving the icons in place would make users coming from Windoze feel more at home. One thing I like about PC Linux OS, is how close it tries to emulate Windoze, which makes those users feel at home. Now that Plasma 5 it getting mature enough to offer numerous themes and layouts, it might be wise to think about making Kubuntu easier for new users. I reckon most pro users will always spend a certain amount of time customising their desktop to how they want it, regardless of this change.

What if we remove the toolbox button?

Personally I never use that thing, and dislike it.

I consider it useless.

All those options are available via right click.

I never use the Toolbox button either, however I would like us to stay as "vanilla Plasma" as possible, as long as the defaults are good for our users. So I vote to keep the icon as it is.

A "trash" that can't be emptied is useless, so it should be removed or fixed. Since it looks like a folder now (ugh!) I vote to remove it.

I never use the toolbox either, but agree that it should likely stay as out default. Question of perhaps moving it to the top right corner instead is still open there in my mind.

I agree that the home and especially trash/wastebin icons should work as most people expect, and if they are not fixable to do so then we get rid for now.

I understand we have a patch for making that Empty Trash button work. Does the patch not work?

I asked the KDE author of the patch this morning, and they seem to think it will. I shall test in a ppa in the next day or 2.

It's not the only issue though.

Where the icons clash with the toolbox it is:

• hard to click the subfolder hotspot (or whatever they are called top left in the hovered icon) on the home icon. This is the feature that expands the folder tree on the desktop in pop-outs.
• impossible to use the other (topmost) hotspot to select that icon, as the folderview activates itself for clicking instead.

Niggly I know, but I don't greatly like shipping icons on the desktop by default until they work properly. If a user chooses to put them there, fine.

Hmmm...

https://phabricator.kde.org/D4956

Maybe that will help. Though I am wary of getting into a situation where each time we patch, a new issue gets exposed that then needs another patch etc......

Wastebin patch works, but the icon hover one does not. Not even on 5.10, as I think kbrouik was testing with a non-standard panel/toolbox/icon arrangement where it worked for just that corner case.

To avoid the clashing of those Home and Wastebin icons with the toolbox, the changes made in 5.10 so far are too extensive to really backport, and still do not help when as is the default Kwin has a corner hotspot in the same corner.

Therefore I propose to either remove those icons for now (a user can add them if they like), or move the toolbox to the top right by default for us and avoid the issue altogether.

Personally I favour the latter, and the plasma people seem from IRC discussion to have no ideological or design objections to distros doing that. In fact some plasma devs were a bit puzzled why it had ever been move to the left in the first place, as it used to be top right in plasma 4..

Uploaded to staging. Would like to get that in for the beta.