Dell Latitude D620 laptop running Precise Puppy 5.7.1
The Connect button and the Browse button are gone from my desktop. Can anyone tell me how to restore them. I was on my desktop when I had to answer a phone call and when I returned my grandson had the mouse in his hand and I have no idea what he might have done.

Desktop icons are programs that end ".desktop". You can search the whole file system with the program mlocate, which provides the "locate" command, like so:

$ locate .desktop

They might be in the trash, or your window manager might be switched to a different work space. Usually work spaces open up as they are requested by the user. I don't know how exactly to switch between work spaces on your version of linux, so you'll have to look it up.

Try those things and then come back if they all fail. If you find the desktop files, put them in the 'Desktop" directory in your home directory. I hope this helps.

Thanks for replying to my post. Forgive me, but I am a real newbie so could you tell me how to find Window Manager and also how and where do I enter the command $locate.desktop. Sorry to be so unfamiliar to os.

On further questioning my grandson what exactly he did with mouse this is what I am getting. He had mouse on Browse and a box came up with text in it-he clicked on Remove . He thought the box would disappear by doing this. Unbelievable.! He must have right clicked Browse and then in the box clicked Remove. In this case is there anyway to retrieve the Browse icin back to the desktop or is it gone forever.? Any help will be appreciated.

The window manager is simply the program that manages your desktop. The point being made is that different window managers offer different ways of switching between workspaces. Most have workspace buttons on the taskbar. Some also let you use the mouse wheel. Some let you move the mouse pointer over the edge of the screen into a new workspace. Just try what works for you.

Windows users are not accustomed to having multiple workspaces, so they sometimes switch to a new one by accident and then wonder where all their windows have gone! This should not affect icons however.

When people give commands in answer to a post, they often include the prompt so that you can see if the command needs to be entered as root (prompt ends in #) or as an ordinary user (prompt ends in $). That character isn't part of the command.

To enter commands, you need to open a terminal. It'll be on the menu somewhere, probably under "Accessories". And the command is "locate .desktop" with a space between the two words. The dot is part of the filename, making this a hidden file. Actually, now that I come to think of it, I think the correct name for this file is ".Desktop", not ".desktop". Linux filenames and commands are case sensitive.

Most window managers let you create new icons by right-clicking on the desktop and choosing New shortcut. So you could get your lost icons back that way.