[Solved] Desktop folder has disappeared

[Anna]

Dear All,

Heip!!!

I must have accidentally moved the Desktop folder into the "Playonlinux" folder (another subfolder in the personal folder).

Moving it back was not possible (it was only copied and the system still considered the folder in the Playonlinux folder to be the legitimate Desktop).

Deleting the "Desktop" folder in the "Playonlinux" folder was impossible, so I deleted the whole "Playonlinux" folder. Now the Playonlinux folder along with the Desktop folder inside are gone, but it is still not possible to create a new Desktop folder in the personal folder where it belongs.

So now I do not have a Desktop folder at all. Instead of the contents of the non-existing Desktop folder the Desktop shows all the contents of the personal folder.

(I hope this description was not too confusing.)

Now I do not dare to do anything at all for fear of messing up the whole system and possibly losing all my files.

How can I create a new Desktop folder in the personal folder?

Best,
Anna

[Anna]

For the record:
A friendly expert on Hexchat was able to help.

You just have to

1. create a new "Desktop" folder,
2. open the file ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs
3. change the entry XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/" to XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop" and
4. reboot the computer.

[dubster]

The same thing happened to me. After a boot the desktop folder was gone and all the icons from my home folder where displayed on the Desktop. No idea how this happened. (I'm on LM 20.1)
The solution works fine. Thx Anna for posting it.