VLC help please

Hi,
Hope you can help - got my one yesterday and am getting to grips with linux. I have activated the advanced mode and succesfully downloaded VLC player and placed its icon on the desktop (albeit not in the section I wanted - but hey ho) . I have a couple of questions:

1. Although I have managed to get the VLC icon on the desktop - I could not find the livna-vlc.desktop file in the usr/share/applications folder (there is a file called VLC media player though). However, its there when I do a file search, but invidisble when I go into the folder - weird. And it must be there because thats what I put in the desktop shortcut command.

2. I'm getting the &U error when starting VLC. I opened the code for the desktop config file and deleted that part from the "Exec=vlc &U" code line , but it would not let me save the file, nor could I change the read only permissions to allow me to.

Grateful for any help.
cheers

 

OK, have sorted out question two myself. This linux takes some getting used to!