How are programs executed in Ubuntu?

[Colin Law]

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