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I have added some apps and programs to the desktop (since I'll be using them often), but then I found that I can actually pin my favorite programs to the launcher. So, now I don't want anything on the desktop to keep it neat and tidy. Unfortunately, when I tried moving the icons to the "trash" I deleted the actual programs/apps (so I undid my action). How can I solve this on Ubuntu 17.04? Thanks a lot.

Here's what I got from ls -a ~/Desktop:

org.gnome.Calendar.desktop
..                             org.kde.kolourpaint.desktop
dell-driver-installer.desktop  photocollage.desktop
eog.desktop                    simple-scan.desktop
gallery-app.desktop            sol.desktop
gnome-mahjongg.desktop         system-config-printer.desktop
org.gnome.Calculator.desktop   unity-activity-log-manager-panel.desktop
Videonauth
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Nermeen Hussein
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1 Answers1

-1

That are all simple link files, you can safely remove them without affecting the installed programs.

So simply delete them and you still be able to access the programs by pressing Super/windows key.

To remove them you can right-click on them and choose delete which sends them to the trashcan or you can use the terminal for that:

WARNING: This will remove all other files on your desktop, not just links! BE VERY CAREFUL when you run this command, and do not run this command unless you want to permanently remove all files as well as links from your Desktop and the Desktop folder.

# this following command removes all icons from the desktop
# so make sure that is what you want to do (this is not reversible)!
rm ~/Desktop/*

or if you want only to remove a single file:

rm ~/Desktop/<file-name>.desktop

You can always recreate those files by dragging the applications from the dash back to the desktop which will create a new icon or as you did pin them from the dash to your dock.

Thomas Ward
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Videonauth
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