Lubuntu doesn't respect user-dirs.dirs

[Liam Condron-Farnos]

I wanted my $HOME to function as my Desktop. TO do this, normally, I would edit '$HOME/.config/user-dirs.dirs', in this case to change the line

XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
to
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/"

This works on other versions of Ubuntu; but on Lubuntu 12.04 (freshly installed, no non-default software) nothing shows up on the desktop (I should see Music, Videos, etc) - even after a reboot of the system.

(I know this isn't a Lubuntu Software Centre bug, but I can't figure out how to file against anything more apprpriate, sorry)

[Stephen Smally (stephen-smally)]

Seems a file manager problem, changed.

[Lars Noodén (larsnooden)]

When setting XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/", there is the error 'The specified directory is not valid' when LXDE starts up. So it does not even accept $HOME or $HOME/ as a valid value.

[Jonathan Marsden (jmarsden)]

Quick potential workaround:

    ln -s $HOME $HOME/desktop-symlink

should create a symlink named desktop-symlink under $HOME that points to $HOME

Now edit ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs to point to $HOME/desktop-symlink and maybe it will work?

Apologies for posting this without testing it, I'm at work :)

[Liam Condron-Farnos (23liam)]

That's the workaround I've been using - well, actually I deleted the 'Desktop' folder and replaced it with a symbolic link, but that's functionally the same. However, that leads to some ugly recursion, and I can't shake the feeling that it could cause actual problems.

I guess I could always just put symlinks in ~/Desktop pointing to ~/Documents ~/Music etc, thus avoiding the recursion, hmm...

[Christopher Forster (christopherforster)]

Also affects Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander). I'm using the LXDE Desktop Environment installed on top of Ubuntu. I get the following message: "The specified directory is not valid" as mentioned @Lars Noodén (larsnooden) comment #2.