On Wed, 20 Nov 2024 at 17:04, Frank Bures <buresf@gmail.com> wrote:

Just upgraded to F41 from F40.

When I try to change properties of a desktop icon (be it VM-manager,
Thunderbird, Chrome or any other) the system would not let me to save the
changes. because:

Could not save properties due to insufficient write access to:
‘/home/fbures/Desktop/virt-manager.desktop’.

And indeed the above location is a link to
/usr/share/applications/virt-manager.desktop

Everything in that directory is owned by root:root

This has been touched on a few times in previous threads, it's always a good idea to check the archives. (Although the hyperkitty search and browsing seems a little broken currently?!)

This article covers .desktop files fairly comprehensively:

https://www.baeldung.com/linux/desktop-entry-files

And from an older thread on the Chrome desktop file:

And, just for posterity: https://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=154052

Note: Please don't modify .desktop files in /usr/share/applications as a) that would require root and b) your changes will be overwritten the next time the app is updated. If you want to modify a .desktop file copy the file to ~/.local/share/applications and edit it there.

.desktop files in ~/.local/share/applications take precedence over .desktop files with the same name in /usr/share/applications and you can hack up the ones in your home directory all day long - worst that could happen is you'd do it wrong and have to start over but the original .desktop file is still on your system :)