You probably already know that Ubuntu Desktop is pretty much empty. There are no application icons on the desktop when you first install Ubuntu. And adding desktop icons wasn’t easy in previous versions of Ubuntu with Unity installed. Today I’m going to show you how to add your favorite icons to the desktop in Ubuntu 12.04 easily. You can do this by just dragging icons from Dash to your desktop, but doing that won’t always work. When you try to launch the icons, you’ll get errors like ‘Untrusted application launcher’ , ‘the application launcher has not been marked as trusted’.

Objectives:

  • Add desktop icons in Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin)
  • Enjoy!

To get started, open Dash and begin dragging your favorite apps to your desktop as shown below.

 

precise_icons_desktop

 

Next, press Ctrl – Alt – T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, run the commands below.

sudo chmod +x ~/Desktop/*.desktop

 

precise_icons_desktop_1

 

Next, run the commands below to assume ownership of all the icons on your desktop.

sudo chown <username> ~/Desktop/*.desktop

 

precise_icons_desktop_2

 

That’s it!

 

precise_icons_desktop_3

 

Enjoy!