Permissions: Desktop folders moving to USB drive

I have a bunch of folders on the Desktop. These folders are owned/grouped to me:me

I have a USB which has all sorts of data, ostensibly owned/grouped to me:me

The folders on the desktop are not symlinks.

I right click and copy the folder on the desktop and try to "paste" this into a folder on the USB. the paste option is disabled. I can't paste this folder. Including In Nautilus

BUT; I have nautilus open and can drag the folder from the desktop in to the open USB folder and it creates the copy on the USB without issue. The original folder remains on the desktop.

What's the reason for this very different approach to copying files?

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The Gnome Devs disabled users ability to keep Icons on Desktop because they do not believe users should engage in that practice.
ZorinGroup re-added that ability using a Gnome Extension.
Can you try reinstalling it:

sudo apt install --reinstall gnome-shell-extension-zorin-desktop-icons

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Same that I did either, options were disabled but I just used some creativity and trying your same workaround it worked, despite I don't see any valid reason for why disallowing copy and paste through context menu while letting this action available through drag and drop, just makes inexperienced users to seek for help for a nonsense issue :unamused:.

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Thanks, both for the feedback. I wasn't sure that I'd not missed something like a certain permission etc , but it appears to be "expected" behaviour.

My reasoning for going with Zorin was as a transition to Linux away from Windows so seems curious the Zorin devs decisions. Rather like a "clean desk" policy at work; it sounds great but just makes common tasks that bit more fiddly.

The silly thing is that the ability to right click and "copy" the desktop entity is not disabled. Surely if they want to guide people away from that aspect they should disable at "copy" rather than at "paste"?

Anywho... thanks :slight_smile:

To be clear, this was a decision made by the developers at Gnome, not ZorinOS. ZorinOS Core uses the Gnome desktop environment, and tried to bring back the expected experience of having a usable desktop. I only recently found out about this limitation, too, so apparently not everything was brought back as expected.

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