So, what good is this Desktop icon on the desktop? It's the wierdest thing I've ever seen.

First off, my version:

I had installed a 7.04 beta, then did an update which took 2 hours, so I kinda think I got the latest versions of everything.



Ok, here's what's going on:


After the install there's an icon on the desktop, that says Desktop (with a arrow at NE).

I tried to use the app menu, with a right click and chose add this launcher to desktop expecting to see "shortcuts" (links I guess) on the desktop.

At first it seemed that nothing happened, then I found them inside the folder that desktop points to, which is

/home/me/Desktop

and in there there is a link of Desktop -> /home/me/Desktop

Anyway, things got all messed up when I tried to move the icons onto the actual desktop. Things sometimes seem to do nothing, only to see wierd things appear after some time.


Isn't this kinda wrong, to have a link to Desktop in the Desktop folder? Ain't this recursive?

Anyway, now I at one point had some icons on the desktop I could not remove; after log out and log in, they were gone.

So, what gives with this Desktop link, how did it get there and am I the only one who finds the desktop metaphor to be not quite working as it should be?

I did an upgrade from Edgy to Feisty, no problems. The directory /home/username/Desktop is your desktop, files in there are shown on the "desktop" are you see. Your problem sounds odd, even funny..but to me it sounds not everything is right. Maybe you should reinstall gnome-related stuff, just in case (clear cache first, to make sure the packages are downloaded from the reposity)? Or try to remove (move, test and if it works, then remove) gnome's config files from under your ~/.gnome2 directory?

When you say you did an upgrade to Feisty, did you do anything special? All I did with my 7.04 beta was to use the update manager as per normal, except it said something like 500 or so updates was needed.

I'm definately not seeing items on the desktop until I log out and back in.

Also, the help file on the desktop says there should be a "computer" icon on the desktop, which I'm not seeing.

I just moved a file from /home/username to /home/username/Desktop and had to logout/in to see it. Likewise, I saved a file from a program to the Desktop folder and it too didn't show up without the logout/in.

I'd try a reinstall, but I'm not sure what to uninsall/reinstall. Can I do this using the add/remove programs and just uncheck, apply, then re-check something?

I got a download of the official feisty release cd, installed it and there's no Desktop icon on the desktop and everything else is working too.

I guess I should have upgraded to the new cd before. So, it looks like my upgrade/update using the update manager is NOT the same as a fresh 7.04 install.

It even fixed other problems, like screen resolution, network card configuration etc.

I've noticed that the recommended "upgrade path" from edgy to feisty is over the network using a button on the upgrade manager. This sounds a lot like what you tried, except the starting point is a previous release rather than a beta of the current release. It will be interesting to see if this goes well for most people or if over the next several days we start hearing a lot of complaints about things not working.

Of course, you're already settled in and don't have to worry about it.