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While Daniel Foré adequately explains the design decision, it does not answer the actual question. You can get the old desktop paradigm back by installing the Nautilus file manager (part of the Gnome project). Also Nautilus will appear inside Slingshot as a second, alternative filemanger to Pantheon Files.

1. Install Nautilus without all the related Gnome packages and dconf-editor, by running the following command in terminal:

    sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends nautilus dconf-tools
   

2. Edit the following config entries by running dconf-editor in terminal or starting dconf-editor from Slingshot:

    org.gnome.nautilus.desktop
   

   Check entries you'd like to see on the desktop

    org.pantheon.desktop.cerbere
   

   Add nautilus -n so the entry should look somewhat like this:

    ['wingpanel', 'plank', 'slingshot-launcher --silent', 'nautilus -n']
   

   Run nautilus -n

    org.gnome.desktop.background
   

   Tick the show-desktop-icons box

Based on the blog post "Enable desktop icons and right click on Elementary Freya OS."