Hello,
I am getting serious about substituting my windows business laptop with Zorin. In that journey, I am trying to locate something similar to Stardock Fences for Linux. I found "folderview-screenlet" but it has not had any update since 2010, so it is out of the question. This allows to have a "window" on desktop that directly open folders under \Home.
I am not looking for a shortcut, rather an actual window to the destination folder, so that along with different desktops, allow to have all your frequent files available quickly, regardless of where they are located in the file structure.
For Reference:
(https://alternativeto.net/software/folderview-screenlet/about/)
and Fences, for those who do not know it: Stardock Fences 5: Automatically organize your desktop apps, files, and folders on Windows 10 and 11
You could try this, though it's 4 years since last update and doubtfully works under Wayland: GitHub - spheras/desktopfolder: Bring your Desktop Back to Life
For what it may be worth, I do believe that Zorin itself should tackle and support the development of this functionality within Zorin. If the long term strategy is to convert Windows users into using Zorin as a viable alternative, I think this functionality should be a priority. My2Cents.
Thank you! I am a Biz User doing a serious attempt to function fully within Zorin, so I do appreciate your answer. I will check because I am not sure if I am using Wayland or X11. Where can I check this? (sorry for the dumb question, but I am learning as time passes).
Settings --> About
With all due respect, Fences-like functionality absolutely should not be the Zorin team's priority.
StarDock as a whole and Fences specifically are things I didn't know still existed. I remember playing with their software, gosh, must be 10 or 15 years ago now, in the XP days? I hadn't heard about them or encountered anyone using them since then. From a quick search, it doesn't look like anyone has requested it in this forum ever before, though one person has mentioned using and liking Fences previously.
Anyway, I don't know if it's still actively developed, but apparently the KDE desktop has a very similar widget:
https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/plasma-desktop/plasma-desktop/folder-view.html
Hi Ultrabenosaurus, I appreciate your opinion and wish to learn from the exchange. I have been a Stardock user since the times they developed for OS/2, a long time ago. Although many people know them for their games, there is an entire business line related to UI enhancements for Windows Users. Me personally, I do appreciate the ability to control the Windows UI in a way natively is not possible unless you tinker with the registry.
But as I am a business user heavily using Windows and truly trying to move to Zorin in a way that works for business users, I thought my post about Stardock to be relevant. Althought I can understand and appreciate your viewpoint as well.
Again, thank you for your input.
Thank you for taking the time to explain. Got it. Using X11. Will follow up on your link to try. Thank you.
Stardock is still very popular and I am on it's forum, as well.
That said, Stardock stands apart from Microsoft, much like how theming stands apart from Gnome.
If Microsoft had their way, stardock would go the way of the Dodo bird.
I would put forth that Stardock supplied themes and software would be great to have ported to GnuLinux. But it cannot be expected as a thing for previous or current Windows OS users, either. It is not a Windows OS thing.
To be honest, I didn't know they did games, either! I only know them from WindowBlinds, ObjectDock, and Fences. I never knew they were popular though, particularly among business users?
Windows has such a market share that Stardock have a plentiful customer base for commercialising these programs, sure, but that doesn't necessarily constitute popular.
Although anecdotal, as mentioned previously, I haven't heard about (in-person or from tech media) or seen anyone using Stardock software for over a decade. None of the companies I've worked for have used any Stardock software, and even the fellow tech / PC enthusiasts among my friends and colleagues haven't brought up Stardock nor any of their software that I can remember.
Though I strongly suspect Stardock have seen a notable uptick in customers (and piracy) thanks to Windows 11... 
I can't imagine a whole lot of businesses are particularly keen on such heavy modifications and customisability for Windows from a 3rd party tool? It would make the IT department's job of managing system updates and supporting users with computer trouble much, much harder. Any given Windows update could break a Stardock feature or setting, and all staff's computers could look totally different with completely different start menus! Literally IT hell.
That said, I would really appreciate this on my work computer, where I'm forced to use $hitdows 11:
XP is dead; long live XP!
Small businesses, maybe. Big businesses? Nooooo... I.T. depts are notorious for not letting you sneeze near any business machine. If they had their way, a member of I.T. would do all the computer operation with the employee dictating what they want done.
For the record: I'm not saying Zorin shouldn't develop such a thing, I just can't agree with it being a priority development. It would also be better, imo, if it was not developed by Zorin, but instead as a separate cross-distro program, to give it a much wider appeal.
Maybe a fork of KDE's folderview, made cross-desktop?
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