Disabling desktop icons in Ubuntu 18.04
Solution 1:
GConf is obsolete and it has been replaced by dconf/gsettings. To disable desktop icons run the following command in Terminal.
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background show-desktop-icons false
For a GUI alternative use dconf-editor instead of gconf-editor, navigate to /org/gnome/desktop/background/, and disable show-desktop-icons option.
Alternatively, use GNOME Tweaks (gnome-tweaks) to turn off the "Show Icons" option in the Desktop tab.
