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Linux desktop entries | Complete Guide | Linux tutorial
Nov 8, 2022
[ 🠺 About 🠸 ] In this guide, you will learn about Linux desktop entries, what are they? How can you create, modify, and use them in your favorite Linux distribution. [ 🠺 Related videos 🠸 ] 🠺 ProtonVPN • Best Free VPN Service For Linux 🠺 https://youtu.be/rTcTvpSIvB 🠺 Install Tor browser on Linux 🠺 https://youtu.be/Pge5bANQVFg 🠺 How to install Microsoft OneNote on Linux 🠺 https://youtu.be/GzTG6uh4HjY 🠺 Best 5 note taking application 🠺 https://youtu.be/u6qJuqX64Us 🠺 MailSpring • An amazing email client for Linux 🠺 https://youtu.be/Ccu6z9-EEbE 🠺 Must have Linux apps guide for power users
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0:00
Hello there and welcome to Linux S2O. In this guide you will learn everything about the Linux
0:09
text of entries. So we will see what are these text of entries and where we use them. I will
0:15
also guide you to create these text of entries in your Linux distribution and will show you some of
0:19
the tweaks that you can use with these text of entries. Now you must have this question in your
0:24
head why should you care about text of entries. To answer this question let me show you what a
0:29
a desktop entry is and then we will go from there. So all these icons you are seeing here
0:35
these are the desktop entries. So here you can see this is the application menu. This
0:40
is GNOME which is why it is looking like this. In different desktop environment it is kind
0:44
of different and in different distribution they have different kind of desktop environments
0:49
and they look differently. But the concept is same. The concept is that these all icons
0:54
that you are seeing, these are the desktop entries. And desktop entry is just a simple file that contains the meta information about a particular
1:04
application and how to start that app. For example, here is the software center
1:09
So if I click on that, it start the software center in my Lirik distribution
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But how does it do that? So let me show you a desktop entry
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All the desktop entries are stored at two locations. So let me just show you the user wide available desktop entry
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Simply press Ctrl X scroll down and find the folder called local
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In local go to share and in this share go to the applications folder
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So you will find these all the desktop entries. We call them desktop entries because they end with a .desktop extension
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So for example I am just going to show you a desktop entry that starts a particular application
1:52
Now here you can see I have a desktop entry for jadebrin's IDE
1:57
So if I open it up you will see that it contains some lines
2:02
So this is the desktop entry and this has the meta information about that particular application
2:08
For example how it can start the application where is the startup executable file where is the icon that it has to show and what is the name of the application
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So this is the basic information. So if I search for this application in my system, IntelliJ you can see it is showing
2:27
me the exact name that is written over here and the icon that is available at that particular
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location and the file that it will execute to start the application
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Now the question that I was talking about why you should care about desktop entries
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Now you should care about these desktop entries because there are times when you have to install
2:48
an application and that application does not come with a desktop entry
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For example recently I published a guide about Droidcam. So if you install the Droidcam in your distribution you will not find Droidcam in your application
3:03
menu because it is not available there. The desktop entry is missing. However you can start the Droid
3:09
Cam using the command line utility as it is available there. So if I search for Droid Cam
3:16
in the utility I can start it from there. Now there are some applications also comes as a
3:23
portable. So you download those applications they are available in portable format and they do not
3:28
have a text of entry. For example, I published a guide about an application called Postman
3:33
and that application comes in a portable format. So you simply download that application and
3:39
it has the startup executable file that's it. You do not get any text of entry and it
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is like this. You download the application, you have the folder of it and inside that
3:48
folder you have a file that you start the application. For example, in this case the
3:54
file name is this. So in order to start that particular application you always have to
3:58
open a terminal and then execute that particular file to start it. Now this is fine with me
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but a lot of people find it cumbersome and they do not want to navigate to that particular
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folder and then execute that particular file in order to start it. So in that case what
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you have to do you have to create a desktop entry so that that application can pop up in your application menu and from there you can simply click on it and it should start the application So let see how we can create that particular desktop entry in our system Now
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as you know the DroidCam is installed in my system but the desktop entry is not available. That means
4:41
I do not get any DroidCam icon over here. So what I can do I can simply create desktop entry in my
4:48
system and configure it to start the DroidCam. So how can I do that? There are
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two simple ways that you can utilize the one is by duplicating any of the desktop
4:57
entry that is available and simply change the name and its information for
5:02
example this is the chat prince so I can simply duplicate it I can change its
5:08
name like DroidCam and I can change the name over here. Let's change the icon as
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well so I'm going to my downloads folder. So I have saved the desktop entry now if
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I search for DroidCam in my system I should get it. So as you can see when I
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type the droid cam I'm getting that text of entry and if I click on it droid cam
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starts in my system so this is the one way to create the text of entry some of
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you may not find this as intuitive so I'm just going to delete it from here and
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I'm going to show you how you can use some applications to create the text of
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entry so for this you need a menu editor so just open up the software center and
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and search for menu editor. You will find bunch of options for installation. So this one is the
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menu libre. This is another one. This is the mozo I think and you will find bunch of these
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applications available. So let's start with this libre menu. Most of the applications look similar
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so you do not have to worry about that. So this will list all the applications that are
6:28
install in your system and you can look at their desktop entries
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For example let me show you the Google Chrome So in order to create a new desktop entry you can simply click on this plus sign and click on add launcher Here you have to specify the
6:48
name for the desktop entry so I'm just going to call it Droidcam new. I can
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choose an icon from here I can browse the files or I can browse the already
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available icons from here so I can choose any of the icons available in the
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icon pack for example if I like this one I can choose this one so let me search
7:08
for Droidcam over here let me see whether it is available or not so Droidcam
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is not available but I can choose any of these if you do not want to choose any
7:17
of these icons you can simply click on browse files and to browse to any
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particular icon here you have to specify the command which was Droidcam to start
7:29
the application if the application does not have any command then you can simply
7:33
choose the file that start the application simply click on the folder
7:37
icon go to that particular application folder for example we have idea IC and
7:43
to start the idea IC we have to execute idea.asset so you can simply select and
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that's it that's all you have to do so I'm just going to type here droidcam
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now you simply hit on the save button and the desktop entry will be created
8:02
Let me search for DroidCam again. Now you see DroidCam new. So here is the
8:09
DroidCam. Now it also comes with one-shop options over here. For example, you can
8:14
specify the category like the internet category, the game category and it also
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has some advanced features. So I'm going to talk about these features now
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So, this was the guide about desktop entries in Linux
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I hope you find this guide helpful. Leave a like, hit the subscribe and let me know what you think about it in the comment
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section below. I shall catch you in the next one. Till then take care and keep enjoying Linux
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