How to make an installed application show up in start menu?

[Moltke]

[member=6960]Vera[/member] instead of populating your home directory with a bunch of folders containing extracted files you could preferable as per Linux conventions also do this in the /opt directory. Let's take for example Icecat Browser. Once you've downloded the app/files create the directory

Code:

$ sudo mkdir /opt/icecat-browser

Next, cd into your downloads directory

Code:

$ cd Downloads

Extract the downloaded icecat-browser files into the newly created /opt/icecat-browser directory

Code:

$ sudo tar Jxf icecat-browser -* -C /opt/icecat-browser

create a symbolic link to the executable in /usr/bin directory

Code:

$ sudo ln -sf /opt/icecat-browser/icecat-browser /usr/bin/icecat-browser

 
To see Icecat Browser in the application menu you need to create a desktop entry.
Open a terminal and create a new file named icecat-browser.desktop in /usr/share/applications

Code:

$ sudo nano /usr/share/applications/icecat-browser.desktop

Insert the following lines here:

[Desktop Entry]
Version = 1.0
Type = Application
Terminal = false
Name = Icecat Browser
Exec = /usr/bin/icecat-browser
Icon = /opt/icecat-browser/icecat-browser.png
Categories = Application;

Save it using shortcut Ctrl+X. When asked for saving, enter Y and then press enter again to save and exit.

You can download an Icecat Browser icon and save it as icecat-browser.png in /opt/icecat-browser directory.

Code:

$ sudo wget -O /opt/icecat-browser/icecat-browser.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6b/Icecat1-300x300.svg/80px-Icecat1-300x300.svg.png

You can use this method for any other app you want to install, you just have to change things accordingly. You might want to read here http://tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Filesystem-Hie...l/opt.html to know a little bit more about /opt directory

Hope this helps!