Desktop Deleted in Ubuntu 12.04

While trying to save files to ~/Desktop yesterday, I had the misfortune of saving a file as ~/Desktop. I wasn't actually aware at the time, and went about my usual business for several days. Then I restarted my computer and my desktop was loaded up with all the documents and directories located in my home directory. In addition to the items I expected to see in my home directory was a PDF named Desktop. Deleting this file and restarting one's computer is not enough to fix this problem. The fix: 1. Open up ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs 2. Modify the line XDG_DESKTOP_DIR to say XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop" 3. Save and close that file. 4. Open up a terminal 5. `killall nautilus` Voila! Far easier than I anticipated. Note that if you're one of those people who stores non-temporary files in ~/Desktop, you will not recover those files using this method.