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Insperatus
Asked: 2012-12-13 11:34:21 +0800 CST

Why does my .desktop file execute via double click but not from the menu?

  • 772

I've installed FTL: Faster Than Light on my girlfriend's Lubuntu machine and created a .desktop file for it. Strangely, the program won't launch via its menu entry under 'Games'.

If I navigate to /home/andi/.local/share/applications/ via pcmanfm and double click on FTL Faster Than Light.desktop the game launches without a problem. I know the menu entry is generated through the .desktop file so why won't it launch from the menu?

Here's the .desktop file I created: FTL Faster Than Light.desktop

lubuntu

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Based on your response to Alex L.'s comment, it sounds like FTL is looking for various things in your current working directory, so if you navigate using a filebrowser or using cd, it works. Since the menu doesn't do that, there's something that it can't find.

    Try editing the .desktop file so the Exec line looks like this instead:

    sh -c "cd /home/andi/.local/share/FTL/ && ./FTL"

    That will switch directories first, and should let FTL find everything it needs to start.

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  2. Paste the following into your text editor:

    #!/bin/bash
cd /home/andi/.local/share/FTL/
./FTL
exit 0

    Save it as FTL-launch in ~/bin/ and set it as executable. Then change the exec line in your .desktop file to

    Exec=FTL-launch

    This is, of course, based on ImaginaryRobots' answer; I've used similar launchers for some old windows games running in wine, where they need to be launched from within their directory.

    If you don't have a ~/bin, you'll just have to create one - though then you may need to log out & log in again for it to work.

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  3. Did you install the desktop file? As far as I understand, desktop files need to be installed by doing,

    sudo desktop-file-install myfile.desktop

    Where, of course, myfile.desktop should be 'FTL Faster Than Light.desktop' in this case.

    You could also try using alacarte (also called Main Menu), in which you can create launchers via a GUI.

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  4. You could try making the .desktop file executable. While it's not part of Lubuntu, I know that Nautilus will not run any non executable desktop files. Maybe Lubuntu's menu requires this as well.

    Also, I would try removing the spaces from the file name of the .desktop file.

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