[SOLVED:] Re: gnome 2.3 desktop shows home/me not home/me/Desktop

Tue Dec 20 22:28:42 UTC 2011

On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 2:54 PM, Paul Allen Newell <pnewell at cs.cmu.edu> wrote:
> T.C.:
>
> Sometimes long shots are the best and, in this case, that was it. It was
> $HOME and, when I changed to $HOME/Desktop, I was back in business. Many
> thanks !!!

Excellent!

> I am thinking there may be a bug here as I couldn't change it through
> gconf-editor, but I'm going to have to run tests to confirm that. Right now,
> the poor laptop is screaming at me to get its display repaired, so off it
> goes and I'll look into it when I get the machine back. I think the test is
> "delete" ~Desktop and log back in ... restoring ~Desktop and then playing in
> gconf-editor doesn't get that setting back.

Well, gconf-editor probably was switching between your "desktop" and
your home directory, but at that juncture, they were one and the same!

The real bug is somewhere between GNOME and xdg-user-dirs.  Per [1],
GNOME should run xdg-user-dirs-update on login, and that should have
recreated your Desktop directory.  Nothing should have automatically
changed XDG_DESKTOP_DIR to your home directory, only the
user/administrator is permitted to do so explicitly.

> Also, I am on F14 and this machine will be such until I am able to migrate
> per 3rd party apps. I doubt if the developers care about a gnome 2.3 problem
> now that they are gnome 3.x. And, as you mentioned, the latest version
> doesn't have a Desktop so its even more meaningless.

Unfortunately, I believe your assessment is correct.  AFAIK, GNOME
upstream is no longer interested in GNOME 2 bugs.

> Once again, I appreciate your taking the time to help me with this,

No problem!  Glad we were able to sort it out.  :-)

-T.C.

[1] http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/xdg-user-dirs