My problem is that my desktop is empty -- there are no files or directories in it. The launcher on the left and the menu at the top are both ok. But, after a recent upgrade from 12.04 to 12.10, everything in my Desktop was emptied.

I do have files in my ~/Desktop directory, which is what I want displayed. In ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs, I also have XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop/". Is there something else I should be looking for?

I actually have another Ubuntu machine and I don't have the same problem there after upgrading. So, I don't think this is a bug with 12.10 but just some setting (a package, etc.) that was set in one machine but not the other.

Oh, I am not sure if this is related to nautilus, but the two machines have the same nautilus-related packages installed...

Any help would be appreciated!