Gnome-do and “home folder”/Nautilus

I’ve had a nagging problem with opening my home folder from the launcher/dock that I use in Ubuntu 9.04 (“Jaunty”), gnome-do. It’s an awesome program that I really miss when I’m on windows at school, it gives so much power and so many shortcuts so easily.

Anyway, there’s this silly bug with it on Jaunty where if gnome-do runs at start up, it’s unable to open a file browser window. (the application is called nautilus, but you either already know that or you don’t need to) My understanding is that the problem is with the order things start in, but the good thing is that there’s a dead easy fix for the problem.

First up,you need to edit the shortcut file that opens your home folder:
gksudo gedit /usr/share/applications/nautilus-home.desktop

Go to line 6, and add a space and a period to the line, so it changes from:
Exec=nautilus --no-desktop

to:
Exec=nautilus --no-desktop .
(notice that tiny little dot at the end that makes all the difference!) Close it and save the file.

Hopefully this change will be done for October and the Karmic Koala, but for now my two installs will run happier and smoother with just one little dot as a difference!

(via https://bugs.launchpad.net/do/+bug/387723)