Debian – Why is Debian Wheezy not displaying desktop icons

There is very insidious desktop file key - TryExec. According to docs:

TryExec

Path to an executable file on disk used to determine if the program is actually installed. If the path is not an absolute path, the file is looked up in the $PATH environment variable. If the file is not present or if it is not executable, the entry may be ignored (not be used in menus, for example).

So, it may result in missing menu entry if it is not filled properly. And by "properly" I mean that it always must point to actual executable.

Surprisingly, if you trying to launch your program in modified environment using env, it stops working. Here is example of invalid desktop file from my distro's package:

TryExec=env FONTCONFIG_FILE=/usr/share/fonts/fonts.conf telegram -noupdate
Exec=env FONTCONFIG_FILE=/usr/share/fonts/fonts.conf telegram -noupdate -- %u

It doesn't work because DE looks for env FONTCONFIG_FILE=/usr/share/fonts/fonts.conf telegram -noupdate executable, treating whole string (including spaces) as file path, which is missing, of course.

The solution is also simple: just specify path to actual executable (even relative):

TryExec=telegram

I think you can do it without having to resort to dconf-editor now. Make the following changes directly to Nautilus' keyboard accelerators, located here:

$ vim ~/.config/nautilus/accels

Then replace this line:

; (gtk_accel_path "<Actions>/DirViewActions/Trash" "<Primary>Delete")

by this one:

(gtk_accel_path "<Actions>/DirViewActions/Trash" "Delete")

Then restart Nautilus:

$ nautilus -q
-or-
$ killall nautilus

References

• How can I delete a file pressing only "delete" key? (In Gnome 3.6)
• How to restart nautilus without logging out?