Desktop moves simply by click and drag!

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 .

do NOT run nautilus with sudo. Use gksudo as this is used to run GUI apps. sudo is ONLY for command line commands and you will ruin your file ownerships by using sudo with GUI apps. I have a link stored to hightlight exactly what will happen as I had to help some other poor sap who screwed his files this way:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/azureus/+question/72151

Education over, on with a fix

Ok so you say you dragged your desktop into you music folder. Do you mean that you moved ~/Desktop to ~/Music (or similar)?

Just want to clarify exactly what folders have gone where.

Thanks

Hi. Please let us know what went where if you can.

I think you can just open a normal nautilus file-browser, i don't think you need to sudo it - even get it from the "Places" menu. Just open the folder that contains "Desktop". Go up to the "View" menu in nautilus and get it to show a "side pane". At the top of the side-pane is a grey title "Places" with an arrow beside it pointing down. Click on the down arrow and from the drop-down list click on "Tree". Now drag the "Desktop" folder from the folder it's in and drop it the side-pane on "Home Folder".

Remember slow is smooth, so be cool and slow - don't hastily jab at things for doing this.
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Thanks for the reply,

I dragged my Desktop into '/home/*user*/Media/Animation'
(I like to make animations) While I was re-categorizing my files.

I took your advice and stopped using 'Sudo nautilus' I use this very often and it would've been a disaster to mess it all up. I tried 'gksudo' to do reposition it, but Nautilus will NOT let me delete the original file. Mess up my system or not, I should be able to modify my files, but using a special command to do it, I can understand.

Thanks,
~Caleb

HEY! WHY IS THIS MARKED AS SOLVED!

This is why a gui is sometimes a bad thing.

Open a terminal and try mv ~/Media/Animation/Desktop ~

OK new news,

I'm such a klutz! I 'accidentally' renamed the Desktop 'dgtj' don't ask me how.
Now the dekstop is tied to the folder name: Home>*user*>Media>Animation>dgtj.

Well at least this tells us one thing. That whatever you do to the Desktop, happens to a folder, and if you could tie the Desktop, to a different folder and managed to delete all the others, everything could be back to normal. Is there a configuration file that controls this?

Either that or I system restore to 2 days ago. CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE does not work for me.

Please help!

!!!!! Sorry, I keep pressing this problem is solved button!!!!!

I suppose more specifically put,

There is probably a configuration file that controls the link between the Desktop, and the Desktop folder. If I could change where it links to, then the problem would be fixed!

But I don't know; If that is, what it is, and where it is...

~Caleb

I'm too used to one button.

Maybe you could restate the exact problem you are having now... Is
there a ~/Desktop folder? Does it have everything in it that you want
and is the Desktop functional? Is the issue that you can't delete the
(now renamed) duplicate folder in your Animations directory?

if you run (in terminal)

file ~/Desktop

what is the output?

I typed the command and got this:
'/home/caleb/Desktop: ERROR: cannot open `/home/caleb/Desktop' (No such file or directory)'

As far as I know, there is a Desktop folder, but the Desktop is no longer synchronizing with it. Instead it's synchronizing with, filename: /home/*user*/Media/Animation/dgtj.

I CAN easily delete 'dgtj' but, the Desktop won't allow me to move or make new files in a non-existent directory. I CAN'T delete the Original Desktop which is sitting in the same directory as 'dgtj.'

I tried what Steve said (5th post from the top) and what happens is, the Desktop folder is copied and placed in Home. It has a folder icon instead of a Desktop icon, and can be cut, copied, pasted, or deleted.

I tried moving the Desktop a lower subfolder, and it makes a copy, but switches to synchronize with it. The Desktop is now synchronizing with: Ya no what, I'll give you my username.

/home/caleb/Media/Animation/Animations.

'/home/caleb/Desktop: ERROR: cannot open `/home/caleb/Desktop' (No such file or directory)'

This is the output you should be getting:
$ file ~/Desktop/
/home/caleb/Desktop/: directory

If your desktop is no longer ~/Desktop, take a look at the following file:
~/.config/user-dirs.dirs

In this file you should have one line saying:
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"

If not, your desktop folder will be disconnected (that is to say ~/Desktop will not be your Desktop)

Caleb please don't follow this plan yet until other people have commented on it or tweaked it because i haven't a clue if this might work.

Hey everyone, how does this sound for a way of fixing this?

1. Create a new folder in /home/caleb and call it "Desktop"
2. use komputes answer by editing
/home/caleb/.config/user-dirs.dirs
to include the line
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
shouldn't that be "$HOME/caleb/Desktop"?

Good luck and regards to all from
Tom :)

Thanks for the help guys,

I found a temporary solution, but after some time it didn't work:

I dragged the folder 'Desktop' (home/caleb/Media/Animation) to a subfolder in the animation directory (home/caleb/Media/Animation/Animations) now, the Desktop is linked to this new folder in:

(home/caleb/Media/Animation/Animations)

But 'Root' doesn't like my change and somehow changed the link back to the original, undeletable, unmoveable, Desktop folder (home/caleb/Media/Animation)

Well at least that's a step forward,

Oh, and Tom, Can I copy and quote your suggestion on 'Linux forums' for comments?

HI, yes for comments. If it works then feel free to just use the answer anywhere. No need to quote you got the answer from me
Thanks and regards from
Tom :)

If you edit the "user-dirs.dirs" then you'll need to sudo it because it's a system file. I would do something like this

cd /home/caleb/.config
ls
sudo cp user-dirs.dirs user-dirs.dirs.080809
ls
sudo gedit user-dirs.dirs

Note the "ls" is a lower-case "LS" and shows a LiSt of what's in the folder. the "sudo" command will ask for your normal user password, not your SuperUser/Root one even tho it gives SuperUser privileges to the command that follows. The 2nd sudo command wont ask you for a password because the 1st time gives you a 10minute window for doing moree sudo commands. The "cp" command makes a backup CoPy of the file "user-dirs.dirs" and calls it "user-dirs.dirs.080809", i find it handy to have a date-stamp on backup copies in case i get muddled about which one is which if i actually need the backup ;). Gedit is quite a neat text-editor but we all have different favourite ones; vi, vim, nano, scite and others are good.

Anyway sudoing the gedit command allows you to save the system-file and makes sure the normal user is kept out of being able to edit it at whim ;)
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)