Although I agree that installing and uninstalling gnome-shell and gnome-tweak-tool is a way to get this done, I don't think it's the best, nor the easiest. There is an alternative, which seems to be easier IMO. In gnome-terminal you can run the next command as user: GSETTINGS_BACKEND=dconf gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background show-desktop-icons true It should be a single line, but Evolution is splitting it. You can revert, if you ever wish to do so, with: GSETTINGS_BACKEND=dconf gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background show-desktop-icons false Again, this should be a single line. This way neither gnome-shell, nor gnome-tweak-tool are needed. Besides, using this method, every single thing done in gnome-tweak-tool can be done without it, directly from the command line. -- <>< Sorin-Mihai Vârgolici