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Accepted
Ray
Asked: 2012-11-06 19:26:15 +0800 CST

Desktop empty under Ubuntu 12.04

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My problem is that my desktop is empty -- there are no files or directories in it. The launcher on the left and the menu at the top are both ok. But, after a recent upgrade from 12.04 to 12.10, everything in my Desktop was emptied.

I do have files in my ~/Desktop directory, which is what I want displayed. In ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs, I also have XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop/". Is there something else I should be looking for?

I actually have another Ubuntu machine and I don't have the same problem there after upgrading. So, I don't think this is a bug with 12.10 but just some setting (a package, etc.) that was set in one machine but not the other.

Oh, I am not sure if this is related to nautilus, but the two machines have the same nautilus-related packages installed...

Any help would be appreciated!

12.10

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Maybe for some reasons Nautilus is configured not to display icons on your desktop.

    Open a Terminal an run

    gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background show-desktop-icons true

    to tell Nautilus to display them.

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