gnome-games and gnome-games-app on Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS

[Keith]

On 8/25/21 3:11 PM, Ian Bruntlett wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have both gnome-games and gnome-games-app installed on a computer for
> a friend.
>
> I'd like to make access to the gnome-games games easy but I can't get
> gnome-games-app to recognise them. Any ideas?
>
> TIA,
>
>
> Ian


Gnome-games-app (gga) is typical of too many gnome.org programs: a
fairly good idea that suffers from a half-assed implementation. In this
case, the gga has no obvious working way to find the games installed on
the system, not even the games that are installed with the gnome-games
package. So you either have to add the games manually via a file
manager, or create a new directory in Home (~/Games) and copy or symlink
the desktop files (*.desktop) of the games there and then start System
Settings and go to Settings->Search->Search locations->Other->+ and add
your newly created Games directory. Then when gnome's indexing service,
tracker, runs, it's supposed to populate the games in gga.

You'll find the gnome-game desktop files and any other games installed
via the package manager in /usr/share/applications.

To install manually, right click on the game desktkop file and select
"Open with Games" and it'll automatically add it to gga.

--
Keith