desktop shortcut names just print the file name ("*.desktop") and a generic icon

[David M. Karr]

I have VMs for 14.04, 15.10, and now 16.04. I've had no particular trouble creating desktop shortcuts in the first two. I typically create a new desktop entry by copying the "*.desktop" file in ~/Desktop to a new file and editing the contents, changing the Name, Icon, and Exec properties. This has worked perfectly fine in the first two.

In 16.04, although "executing" the shortcut (double-clicking, for instance) works fine, executing the application I want, the display of it is somewhat defective in two ways. First, all of the shortcuts I create this way are using the same generic icon (looks like a document editor, with "Aa" in text with some little colored boxes). My "Icon" property is a fully-qualified path to the icon file. I've double-checked that the path I specify there exists. Second, the label underneath the icon isn't the "Name" value, it's just displaying the name of the ".desktop" file, including the ".desktop" extension.

I then tried the "recommended" way of creating shortcuts for "provided" applications by searching for the app in the "appstore" (don't remember what that's called) and then dragging the icon I found onto the desktop. I thought I tried this yesterday, and it resulted in the same symptom, but when I tried it today it worked fine.

So I then looked closer at the generated ".desktop" file and compared it to my "hand-coded" ".desktop" files. The generated one had quite a few more properties, but I didn't see anything obvious that indicated why mine was not working properly. However, I still looked at the differences and decided to try removing some differences to see if it would fix my hand-coded file. The first thing I noted was that in my hand-coded file, the "Name" property was not the first property setting in the "Desktop Entry" group, but in the generated one, it was. I read the "Desktop Entry Specification", and I didn't see any indication that the order of those properties was relevant, but just in case, I tried making that change.

In fact, that appeared to be the problem. When I just moved the "Name" property to the first position in the group, the icon and name displayed correctly.

I'd call this a bug. This ordering constraint was not required in 14.04 or 15.10, and again, the "Desktop Entry Specification" says nothing about any required ordering of these properties.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: ubuntu-desktop 1.361
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-21.37-generic 4.4.6
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-21-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Thu Apr 28 14:16:15 2016
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-04-26 (2 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20160420.1)
SourcePackage: ubuntu-meta
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[David M. Karr (davidmichaelkarr)]

Unfortunately, now since I did something to "fix" the desktop entry, even if I change it back so the "Name" property isn't first, it won't display the problem anymore. I even tried copying one of them to a new file with a different name, with the "Name" property not first, and that works also.