How are programs executed in Ubuntu?

[blind Pete]

Colin Law wrote:

> On 2 February 2016 at 03:12, blind Pete <0123peter at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> Does the Dash automatically pick up desktop files from
> /usr/local/share/applications?
> 
> Colin

I don't know.  Put one there and see what happens.  

Unless you are the system administrator of a multi user system 
it is a bit pointless, it is just another place to lose stuff.  

Developers use /usr/share/*, 
administrators use /usr/local/share/*, 
users use ~/.local/*, or ~/.config/*.  

Most people only need to keep /home on its own partition, then 
when they reinstall or upgrade, their configurations (mostly) 
stay intact.  

-- 
blind Pete
Sig goes here...