Comment 53 for bug 122602

Thanks for clarifying this, Sebastien! Here's what I now get with my setup:

After removing the non-translated Desktop directory (leaving translated in Place), and logging in afterwise, the home directory magically becomes the desktop, cannot figure out why :(

But If I create a translated Desktop directory in an absolutely blank homedir (all dotfiles erased, then copied over from /etc/skel), only the translated folder remains in place, and Places Menu only points to the translated dir, just as expected :)

One solution to the problem might be running the user-dirs creation program before any other GNOME-ish stuff comes in and manages to create the bogus non-translated Desktop, that seems to ruin the whole xdg-user-dirs idea.

Another pointer is the /usr/bin/xdg-user-dir script itself:

#!/bin/bash

test -f ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-~/.config}/user-dirs.dirs && source ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-~/.config}/user-dirs.dirs
if [ "x$1" == "xDESKTOP" ]; then
  eval echo \${XDG_${1}_DIR:-$HOME/Desktop}
else
  eval echo \${XDG_${1}_DIR:-$HOME}
fi

It seems to always return "$HOME/Desktop" if the DESKTOP folder is requested, pretty strange, hmm?