As of now, my desktop has begun showing the contents of my home folder (~) instead of the contents of ~/desktop. I must have changed something, but I have no idea what, or what I was doing exactly when it happened.

How do I re-point gnome to the right folder?

I'm running Ubuntu 11.04.

7 Answers

If gconf doesn't work, open your home directory and press Ctrl+H to show hidden files. Look in .config for user-dirs.dirs and be sure it resembles this:

XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Downloads"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/Templates"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/Work"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Documents"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/Music"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Pictures"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Videos"

1

Press Alt + F2 and type/copy:

gconftool-2 --set --type bool /apps/nautilus/preferences/desktop_is_home_dir false

You probably need to log out and back in again (alternatively, you can run nautilus -q to restart just Nautilus).

2

Press alt f2 and type gksu gconf-editor and navigate to apps -> nautilus -> preferences. Have a look at:

1

I think if you run this command:

vim ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs

you'll find:

XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME"

but it should have /Desktop like this:

XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME"/Desktop 

So just run the command mkdir Desktop and then change the line in ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs.

The other lines should look like this:

XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Downloads"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/Templates"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/Work"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Documents"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/Music"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Pictures"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Videos"

This is what helped me

sudo -H gedit ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs

And replaced XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME" with XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"

# This file is written by xdg-user-dirs-update
# If you want to change or add directories, just edit the line you're
# interested in. All local changes will be retained on the next run
# Format is XDG_xxx_DIR="$HOME/yyy", where yyy is a shell-escaped
# homedir-relative path, or XDG_xxx_DIR="/yyy", where /yyy is an
# absolute path. No other format is supported.
#
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Downloads"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/Templates"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/Public"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Documents"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/Music"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Pictures"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Videos"

Following command works on Ubuntu 12.10.

gconftool-2 --set --type bool /apps/nautilus/preferences/desktop_is_home_dir false

Some folders in my $HOME such as Desktop and Templates, were always empty and never being used, so I removed them. Then after upgraded from Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04, all the files and directories including the hidden ones suddenly all displayed on the desktop. As suggested, edit ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs to point the XDG_DESKTOP_DIR back to "$HOME/Desktop". Of cause, do mkdir ~/Desktop, then logout and login back, voilà, everything is good!

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Sign up using Google Sign up using Facebook Sign up using Email and Password Submit

Post as a guest

Post Your Answer Discard

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy