How are programs executed in Ubuntu?

[blind Pete]

Colin Law wrote:

> On 29 January 2016 at 21:00, Jim Byrnes <jf_byrnes at comcast.net> wrote:
>> ...
>> After much stumbling around I finally got this to work. The first thing I
>> did wrong was to create a file called myprog.desktop based on the link
>> you gave above and drop it in /local/share/applications. That did not
>> work.
>>
>> Then I tried using the utilities mentioned in the link above, but they
>> could
>> not find the file even I was looking at it in Nemo.  Finally I used ls in
>> a terminal and it showed up as myprog.desktop.desktop. Apparently that
>> location adds .desktop by default but Nemo did not display it.
>>
>> Once I fixed that the desktop utilities put it in the proper location and
>> I was able to put it on the launcher.
> 
> Just checking that you realise that the proper place is
> .local/share/applications.  Installed applications put their launchers
> in /usr/share/applications but generally you should put diy ones in
> .local/share/applications.
> 
> Colin

For a single user machine, put your personal configurations in 
~/.local/share/applications and leave /usr/share/applications 
to Ubuntu.  

For a multi user machine the system administrator might put things in 
/usr/local/share/applications.  Stuff in /usr/local/ is available to 
all users and should not be overwritten by Ubuntu even during a 
re-install, *if* you put /usr/local/ on its own partition.  

Most people have an empty /usr/local/ and that is fine.  

-- 
blind Pete
Sig goes here...