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