SUMMARY If you change the desktop icon of a "basic link to folder" to any icon, including system icons, they revert back to the default icon after logging out. After logging back in, if you go to the properties of the link your updated the icon setting is showing (in the link properties) as you intended. If you then click "OK" the icon displayed on the desktop is as intended. The changed icons are still correct when you view the file system in e.g. Dolphin, it's just how they appear on the desktop that's wrong. STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Create a basic link to a directory 2. Once created, go to the properties window of the link and click on the icon. Select any icon and press OK. The selected icon will show on the desktop OBSERVED RESULT Log out then log back in again. The icon of that link will be changed back to its default icon. EXPECTED RESULT After logging out and back in again the link's icon should be the one that you selected SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Operating System: Kubuntu 20.04 KDE Plasma Version: 5.18.5 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.68.0 Qt Version: 5.12.8 Kernel Version: 5.4.0-52-generic OS Type: 64-bit Processors: 2 × Intel® Pentium® CPU G840 @ 2.80GHz Memory: 3.7 GiB of RAM ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Note that is isn't consistent. Mostly this occurs as described but occasionally - maybe once in 15 to 20 reboots - it works as intended
I have a sort of fix which is - Right click on the desktop and select "Configure Desktop" - Go to Icons and ensure "Preview thumbnails" is selected - Click on "Configure Preview Plugins..." and on the resulting list unselect everything apart from Folders. I needed to do this three or four times for it to be saved. It then retained the icon settings although it still showed the "share" and "link" preview.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 439954 ***