Ubuntu

No icons on desktop

Asked by Kodi Arfer

Ever since I first rebooted after upgrading from Intrepid to Jaunty, my desktop has been empty of icons, even though everything I left in ~/Desktop is still there. Changing the contents of ~/Desktop doesn't help, and if I try to drag-and-drop a file onto the desktop, it stays in its current position. The desktop background displays normally, and Nautilus appears to be working fine.

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Kodi Arfer
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This question was originally filed as bug #374060.

Revision history for this message
Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson) said : 		#1

Thank you for taking the time to report this issue and helping to make Ubuntu better. Examining the information you have given us, this does not appear to be a bug report so we are closing it and converting it to a question in the support tracker. We appreciate the difficulties you are facing, but it would make more sense to raise problems you are having in the support tracker at https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu if you are uncertain if they are bugs. For help on reporting bugs, see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#When%20not%20to%20file%20a%20bug.

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Gabe Gorelick (gabegorelick) said : 		#2

Run gconf-editor and make sure that the /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop setting in gconf is on. If it is off, then nautilus (the file manager) won't draw your desktop icons. Hope this helps.

Revision history for this message
Kodi Arfer (spamdummy3) said : 		#3

It is on, though it doesn't seem to be taking effect. Perhaps this is a bug in Nautilus.

Revision history for this message
Kodi Arfer (spamdummy3) said : 		#4

Lots of trial and error revealed that removing ~/.local/share/applications solves the problem.