I made a fresh install of Ubuntu 22.04 from a live usb key around start of May, on two different machines. Everything went fine except that the icons on the desktop do not open. More precisely:
Both for files and folders on the desktop (including the home directory icon that 22.04 puts by default), the following methods only make the icon highlighted, but do not open it (whether using the mouse or the touchpad):
- left double click
- middle click
- right click + "Open" in the menu.
Only the following method does work for files on the desktop (but is not available for folders):
- right click + "Open with..." + select the first application --- or any other in the list, actually.
The following observation might also be of interest:
- I can launch the Gnome Files manager from the side bar, open my desktop folder in it, and then open anything inside with any usual method, such as double click
- I can also right click on an icon on the desktop, and select "Show in Files", and then it appears in Files and I can double click on it
- however, if I right click directly on the Desktop and select "Open Desktop in Files", then nothing happens.
I made the following checks:
the permissions of my Desktop folder, and of the folders and files in it, are correct (755 or 644)
the default applications are correct (document viewer for pdf files, text editor for txt files, etc.)
sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop
wait a few weeks for updates and install them
create new users with default configuration.
But the problem is still there. Any ideas that could help?
(The only hypothesis that further comes to my mind that I have not investigated yet, is that I installed gnome-tweaks on both machines, so maybe it could interfere somehow.)
EDIT: each time I try and fail opening an icon on the desktop, /var/log/syslog logs errors of this type:
gnome-shell[xxxx]: DING: grep: /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/WSLInterop: No such file or directory
gnome-shell[xxxx]: DING: WSL Interopability is disabled. Please enable it before using WSL.
gnome-shell[xxxx]: DING: grep: /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/WSLInterop: No such file or directory
gnome-shell[xxxx]: DING: #033[31m#033[1m[error] WSL Interoperability is disabled. Please enable it before using WSL.#033(B#033[m
gnome-shell[xxxx]: DING: /usr/bin/wslview: line 216: /mnt/c/Windows/System32/reg.exe: No such file or directory
gnome-shell[xxxx]: DING: /usr/bin/wslview: line 308: [: -ge: unary operator expected
gnome-shell[xxxx]: DING: #033[31m[error]#033(B#033[m This protocol is not supported before version 1903.
So it seems desktop-icons NG wants me to enable WSL Interoperability, but I wasn't able to find out how to do it.
That said, I don't see what interoperability between Windows and Linux has to do with opening folders or pdf files on my desktop?!
My machines are dual boot. But my Ubuntu installations are independent of Windows. I'm certainly not running a Linux inside a Windows. So why does desktop-icons NG ask for WSL Interoperability?!
