LebGeeks

Fischer

Member

Ubuntu: Why doesn't the app launcher detect some apps

I downloaded Scid from the software center, as far as I know, everything we download from the center should be an apt package, thus it should be detectable by the system.

However, scid is not listed in the menu of installed apps, the default application finder does not find it, nor Synapse, they find everything but Scid. Why?

I'm on Xubuntu 13.10 but this issue is on every Debian/Ubuntu based distro. (I haven't try it on other distros). I just want to know why some software aren't detectable by the system.

Joe

Member

Re: Ubuntu: Why doesn't the app launcher detect some apps

Disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing about Ubuntu, software center, menu of installed apps, default application finder or Synapse.

this issue is on every Debian/Ubuntu based distro

On Debian Wheezy, the install of Scid was very straightforward:

$ sudo apt-get install scid
...
$ scid

Voilà !

I just want to know why some software aren't detectable by the system.

Could be many reasons. Maybe they're not configured properly. Or maybe the environment isn't configured properly. Maybe something simply went wrong during the installation. We cannot guess, but we can investigate.

If you want a proper answer, do the following steps in a new terminal window (Any existing one may contain an obsolete configuration and will confuse our investigation):

• $ dpkg -l | grep scid

• $ scid

• $ echo $PATH

• $ find $(echo $PATH | tr : " ") -name '*scid*'

You should probably paste your output in your favorite pastebin (I recommend hastebin, because it's pretty) to avoid polluting the forum with lots of text.

Once we see the output of these commands, we can start to understand better what your problem is.

Fischer

Member

Re: Ubuntu: Why doesn't the app launcher detect some apps

It turns out that Scid doesn't create a .desktop file in /usr/share/applications thus it can't be found using any app launcher, I filled a bug report on launchpad, hopefully they'll fix it.

Hastebin is pretty! Shame you can't create accounts and save your stuff like pastebin