Desktop program links opening as text?

[Daniel Robitaille]

On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 9:47 AM, geo <yaktur at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Yes, it's a fresh 7.10 OS install - I had to reformat the drive and I
> repartitioned it as well. But the home directories are saved from the
> previous 7.10 install.
> ...
> When I login as Root user, I just noticed....the problem doesn't occur. The
> Root account is on the same partition as the OS. Is this an important clue?

have you tried  a different account, not root or yourself, but another
normal user one?

Usually these type of problems are on a per-user basis, and the root
cause is problably somewhere in gnome config files in the user account
in his/her home directory. (the config files are in directories like
.gnome, .gnome2, etcin your home directory).

If a different account on your system doesn't have the problem, then
it is a strong hint that the problem is in your specific user home
directory, and not some sort of system-wide bug, or mysterious problem
a reinstall could solve.  If that's the case you can try to spend a
lot of time to track it down, and personally I don't even know where
to start to do that,  or you can start fresh with a totally new
account or new home directory for your account.

> You mentioned Nautilus? Is Nautilus responsible for the desktop behaviour? If so,
> is there a way to force Nautilus to remedy itself?
>
> (in the old Macintosh days when something didn't work right on the desktop you
>  just forced the Mac to rebuild the invisible desktop database, something you could
> do with a certain key sequence. Does something like this exist with Linux as well?)

that option doesn't exist, to my best knowledge, in either Linux, or OSX.

In the past, when I had problems with gnome, especially when migrating
between Linux version, I would clean up my home directory by starting
with a default one, and them moving my normal files/diredctory back
into that fresh home directory.  Yes there is a downside: all my
personalizations were lost, but I found that was easier to deal with
than having a half-broken configuration.



-- 
Daniel Robitaille
 http://friendfeed.com/robitaille