Hide Icons on Gnome Desktop

The first step in achieving clutter free desktop area is "Hiding icons on desktop". Gnome provides a way to do that. First open up gconf-editor (Gnome Configuration Editor) by executing following command.

gconf-editor

Now navigate to /apps/nautilus/preferences and uncheck the tick mark on the option show desktop.

As soon as you uncheck the option show desktop icons on your desktop will instantly disappear.