LXDE Forums

Why is there no trash can? Is it planned for the future? Is there a work around?

Any plan to implement a Trash can in LXDE? When I think of a desktop environment, it seems odd to have a desktop environment which is missing something as vital and basic as a trash can.

The LXDE maintainer for Mandriva Linux informed me that the trash can is complicated to implement, based on the freedesktop.org Trash specification. I was referred to this page.

So what happens to a file once it is deleted?

I would assume it would be "moved" to /home/your-user-name/.local/share/Trash, but it doesn't. Does it just get physically deleted?

Surely this is easy to implement (move rather than delete), then perhaps implement a "special" version of pcmanfm to deal with the files in trash.

I would guess that the files and/or folders are physically deleted.

Some people have used the the Thunar file manager to get a trash can. It won't give you one on your desktop, but when you delete files using Thunar it will go to a trash accessable through Thunar. Thunar is also pretty fast and light.

You can also create a trashcan which will work with command line, and should work with PCManFM (has anyone confirmed this?) This also describes how to create a desktop trash icon.

From http://wiki.lxde.org/en/PCManFM

Perhaps its time all of you realized nothing is ever deleted even if RMed. Go through your file system and retrieve the misplaced files. They have yet to be written over.

Depends on your filesystem.
I am using XFS on my machines and so files are gone, if they are RMed.