How are programs executed in Ubuntu?

[Colin Law]

On 3 February 2016 at 00:56, blind Pete <0123peter at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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:
...
>>>> 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?

I agree it is surprising, one might well expect it to work.  I cannot
find anywhere that suggests that the Dash picks up files from that
location (see [1] for example).  Perhaps you could try it and see if
you do any better than I did.  It is not normally necessary to restart
the desktop for the Dash to pick up desktop files.  Yes it had read
permissions.

Regards

Colin

[1] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UnityLaunchersAndDesktopFiles#Adding_a_.desktop_file_to_the_Unity_Launcher