How are programs executed in Ubuntu?

[blind Pete]

Colin Law wrote:

> On 2 February 2016 at 11:49, blind Pete <0123peter at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> When you said that administrators might put desktop files there then I
> assumed you knew that was a valid place to put them.  Having tried it
> it appears that /usr/local/share/applications is not an appropriate
> place for desktop files, so unless I have missed something, which is
> quite possible, then in order to add system wide desktop files they
> have to go in /usr/share/applications.
> 
> Colin

I am very surprised.  The FHS (filesystem hierarchy standard) indicates 
that /usr/local/ is the place to store host specific stuff.  It has 
always been in my PATH.  Type "echo $PATH" without the quotes in a 
terminal.  And /usr/local/share exists on my machine, although 
/usr/local/share/applications/ does not.  

You tried it and it did not work, so you win.  The only things that 
I can think of are; did the file have read permissions, and did 
you restart the desktop?  

-- 
blind Pete
Sig goes here...