Can I make a folder shortcut (eg. root folder) and change its (the shortcut) icon without changing the root's itself.
I was trying to make sth using desktop entries (works for applications well) but i don't know how to apply it to directories. Can anyone help me?

Sure, in Dolphin browse to where you want to create the shortcut, right-click in the empty space -> Create New > Link to Location (URL). In the dialog give the shortcut a name, point it at the directory you want (use / for the root directory), and hit ok. Right-click on the created "folder" and select Properties. Here you can further customize the shortcut, in particular clicking on the icon will allow you to change the icon used for the shortcut.

Thanks for that tip...

It worked fine for me.

Hi and thanks for the tip

I tried it a different way and something odd happened to me. I'm using Kubuntu 11.04 (KDE 4.6). I dragged a folder to the desktop and then chose among the options "Icon". it created an icon linking to my folder. Fine.

But...

I didn't want the name of the shortcut icon to be the same of the original folder. So I right-clicked the shortcut icon and renamed it. The odd thing is that that created a new folder with that name

Let's make an example:
1) I browse Dolphin to /home/thetall82/Videos
2) I drag the folder "Videos" to the desktop and choose "icon".
3) That creates an icon named "Videos" on my desktop, linked to the location /home/thetall82/Videos
4) I right click the icon and rename it to "My_Movies".
5) A new folder /home/thetall82/My_Movies is automatically created, and the desktop icon now points to it.

Isn't this odd? Am I missing anything? Any suggestion?

Thanks in advance for any help
Regards
- thetall82 -

That does seem a little odd - I just tried it (kubuntu 10.04, KDE 4.5) and renaming the icon renamed the original folder (which I assume is what happened in your case as well).
OTOH, it makes sense since the icon is a direct link to a particular folder and doesn't contain any name/description information itself.

Now, this is the behavior if your activity is set up as a Desktop activity. If you set it up as a Folder View activity you will get the usual file manager options of copy/move/link when you drag a file/folder to the desktop. I guess what you probably want is a folder view (activity) with a link to the directory so that you can rename the link without renaming the original.

Hi and thanks for your reply.

Yes my fault: renaming the icon automatically changed the name of the original folder.
The renamed folder was the incoming folder of aMule, that then re-created a folder with the original name. That's what misleaded me, sorry.

Ok, I'll try switching to folder view and see how it behaves. Thanks again.

Cheers