Having a ~/Documents folder makes Gnome use it as your default instead of just ~

[Brian Burger]

This is an odd one. When I was using Windows, I had a folder called "Documents"; I moved it over to Ubuntu last year and it became ~/Documents, and I noticed that almost all of Gnome's apps were using ~/Documents as the default (what they showed when you first opened a File->Open or File-Save As dialogue).

I finally got tired of this, and created a new directory ~/Docs, moved all the stuff from ~/Documents over to it, and deleted ~/Documents. Now everything starts in ~, where it should.

To test, I just created an empty ~/Documents again, and gedit repeats the old bug - it's opening in the new ~/Documents again, not in ~.

It's not just gedit, though, it's most of Gnome's docs, except for a few that remember where you last opened them better.

Sorry about leaving the package name blank, I've got no idea which package this should apply to. I thought there was a package called "gnome-open" that handled the file stuff, but it doesn't seem to be listed...

[Jonathan Carter (jonathan)]

I can confirm that this happens on GNOME 2.14.1.

This sounds more like a feature, than a bug to me.

[Brian Burger (bburger)]

There's no way to turn this 'feature' off and get Gnome to revert to just using ~.

I've got lots of directories coming off ~, some of which I actually use much more than ~/Documents. Having Gnome fixate on ~/Documents just because that directory happens to exist is really quite random.

Therefore I think it's a bug, not a feature - or at best, it's a buggy feature...

[Brian Burger (bburger)]

How the heck did the above get triple-posted?

Have I uncovered a Malone bug, too? :-P

[Dennis Kaarsemaker (dennis)]

> There's no way to turn this 'feature' off and get Gnome to revert to
> just using ~.

Sure there is, remove the ~/Documents folder ;)

[Corey Burger (corey.burger)]

I think the issue here is that the file chooser should be remembering which folder it was in last, not randomly jumping.

[Uphaar Agrawalla (uphaar)]

It definitely happens, with the final Dapper release.

Now just need to figure out whether it's a feature or a bug ;)

[trollord (trollenlord)]

Bug is not present in Feisty (gnome 2.18.1) and up anymore.