[lubuntu-users] how to update 14.04 to 16.04 Lubuntu?

[Walter Lapchynski]

On Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 05:16:22PM -0500, Gary Knott wrote:
> PS, As long as I'm asking questions about Lubuntu,
> Can anyone tell me how to get an icon on my LXDE desktop  that
> "points" to a binary excutable file I have  (called mlab).

You're going to need to make a [desktop file][1]. You can use
`desktop-file-validate` from the desktop-file-utils package to verify
that you have everything setup right, but you'll need a stanza
("[Desktop Entry]"), and at least the Name and Type keys. You'll
certainly want Exec, in your case, and probably want Terminal, too.

> I need my program to be run in a terminal window.

You might want to check and make sure you have the terminal emulator set
appropriately in PCManFM's advanced settings. As suggested in an [upstream
bug][2], you want to be sure to just have the terminal command and not
anything extra.

Remember if you have a program that does not in some way wait for input,
then when it returns control (which for most things is pretty fast), it
will close the terminal window. So if you were running `ls`, it would
appear to do nothing at all. The solution: select the checkbox in the
Shortcut Editor to keep the terminal open.

However, as suggested in another [upstream bug][3], not all terminal
emulators (LXTerminal among them) supports the "X-KeepTerminal" key, so
you might want to just use `xterm`.

> I get the terminal window, but I DO NOT get my program run within it.

My guess here: you've got some trailing stuff like "%f" or "-e" at the
end of your terminal command.

[1]: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/
[2]: https://sourceforge.net/p/lxde/bugs/597/
[3]: https://sourceforge.net/p/pcmanfm/bugs/871/
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