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This is a picture of my desktop, with the main folder in which I store pretty much everything. At some point in time, the computer sprouted a twin. They both have the same name, and go to the same place - there are just two of them. The situation concerns me, as it seems like the indexing of my files and folders in this location has also gone awry, and I assume the issues may be linked.

What should I do? I'm pretty sure I can't delete one, as that would delete everything....

Thanks for your help

Amphibio
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    One of them possibly is a huge .desktop file, although I have no clue how it would have come into existence. What is the output of ls ~/Desktop? – Jacob Vlijm Feb 16 '17 at 16:12
  • Is one of them just a link to the other? – Carl H Feb 16 '17 at 16:14
  • @Jacob, I ran that command, and indeed there is /The Door, and /The Door.desktop .... does that mean it is safe to delete one? – Amphibio Feb 16 '17 at 16:14
  • Seems like that. You could see what is inside it, opening it with gedit 'The Door.desktop' , but it seems useless to me. – Jacob Vlijm Feb 16 '17 at 16:18

1 Answers1

2

.desktop file

The only possible explanation I can think of is that one of them is a .desktop file. To find out, run ls ~/Desktop, and see if that is the case. [your comment confirmed my suspicion]

If That is the case, you can check what is inside it by running

gedit '~/Desktop/The Door.desktop'

It seems a pretty useless file though.

The big question is where it came from

Community
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Jacob Vlijm
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  • Thanks Jacob. This is the output: ** (gedit:6454): CRITICAL **: file log.c: line 980: unexpected error: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.gnome.zeitgeist.Engine: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ChildExited: Process /usr/bin/zeitgeist-daemon exited with status 1 (g-dbus-error-quark, 25) – Amphibio Feb 16 '17 at 16:28
  • @Amphibio that is not the content of the file, but a warning. I'd simply remove the file though, since it obviously just opens another directory. – Jacob Vlijm Feb 16 '17 at 16:30
  • If I were to delete one from the desktop, how would I know which is the right one? There seems to be no way of telling. Do I cut the red wire or the blue wire??? – Amphibio Feb 16 '17 at 16:33
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    @Amphibio the blue one. No, the red one. Nono... :) simply right-click to see properties :) – Jacob Vlijm Feb 16 '17 at 16:35
  • From the view of the properties panel, they are identical: folder type: inode/directory, 95,140 items, home/amphibian/Desktop – Amphibio Feb 16 '17 at 16:39
  • Huh? To make sure, i'd do it from the cli: rm '~/Desktop/The Door.desktop', that is, if your desktop is named "Desktop" (depends on your language). – Jacob Vlijm Feb 16 '17 at 16:42
  • hmmm, think I found a difference. The little yellow one on rightclick has no 'open with...' option, whereas all normal foldera do. Shall I cut it? – Amphibio Feb 16 '17 at 16:42