How to make a Desktop "shortcut" that opens the terminal but under a different directory than the default home?

Most terminal programs like xterm, urxvt, gnome-terminal have an option to change the starting working directory of the shell.

If you are using gnome-terminal, there is a special command line switch you have to provide to start the shell in a user defined directory. The command line switch I'm talking about is

--working-directory=DIRNAME

You should take a look at the manual pages of gnome-terminal to verify this.

So, if you want to make a desktop shortcut, the command you have to enter would be:

gnome-terminal --working-directory=/home/you_username/Dropbox/GTD

Beforehand feel free to test the command in your current terminal session.

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For users on Linux Mint, follow these instructions

1. Right click on the Desktop
2. Select "Create Launcher"
3. Name this shortcut with whatever name you want
4. In the Command field, enter gnome-terminal --working-directory=XXX. Make sure to replace XXX with the directory you want it to go to (see the example above)