.desktop files not displayed or executed correctly in 3.30

[Jonathan Kamens]

I told VirtualBox to create a desktop icon for one of my virtual machines. It worked just fine in cosmic.

After upgrading to disco, however, instead of showing up as an icon, it shows up as a ".desktop" text file, and double-clicking it just opens the text file in gedit.

I tried deleting and recreating the icon in VirtualBox, and that didn't help.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 19.04
Package: gnome-shell 3.30.2-1ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.18.0-13.14-generic 4.18.17
Uname: Linux 4.18.0-13-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.10-0ubuntu19
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Mon Jan 21 15:52:33 2019
DisplayManager: gdm3
InstallationDate: Installed on 2019-01-02 (19 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.10 "Cosmic Cuttlefish" - Release amd64 (20181017.3)
SourcePackage: gnome-shell
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to disco on 2019-01-21 (0 days ago)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. That looks like an upstrema issue, could you also report it to them on https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/issues ?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Reported to https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/issues/847

[Jonathan Kamens (jik)]

I'm not sure I agree that the importance of this issue is "Low". Surely this is an extremely user-visible issue that is going to affect a lot of people if it is still extant when Disco is released?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Upstream closed it as duplicate of https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/issues/184 and basically argue that it's not an useful feature. Do you find it useful in other places than the desktop view. If not maybe they are right and it should be a feature request for the desktop view (which is a new component now)

[Jonathan Kamens (jik)]

Wow.

I haven't seen a better example of developers being out of touch with actual end users in quite a long time.

Let's just wait and see how many people complain when generally available releases without this feature start getting pushed out.

OMG ridiculous.

[Jonathan Kamens (jik)]

I have gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons installed and enabled. The maintainer of that package claims that it is supposed to display desktop icons properly. So this is a legit issue. Please reopen it.

[Jonathan Kamens (jik)]

(See https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/issues/184#note_417375.)

[Jonathan Kamens (jik)]

*sigh* Apparently the maintainer of the extension has decided that for "security reasons" you have to right-click on ".desktop" files and enable them before they will be displayed as app icons and executable. So I guess this isn't a bug. Just an IMO poor design decision.

TL;DR Not considered a bug by the maintainer, don't reopen bug.