I am relatively new to Linux, I am using Xubuntu 10.04.
A lot of the software I download from the net, e.g. Aptana/Eclipse are just ZIP files that I open and run.
I wish them to be in a specific folder where I can reach them from everywhere when I run “Eclipse”.
I want them to be available to all users.
I want to be able to start them from the drop-down menu on the desktop.
How can I do that?
Answer
There is some kind of “Filesystem Hierarchy Standard”:
The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) defines the main directories
and their contents in Linux operating systems. For the most part, it
is a formalization and extension of the traditional BSD filesystem
hierarchy.
I would put that stuff to:
/opt/ Optional application software packages
Read yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard
For the rest of your questions:
-
That’s a matter of having the path to the binary / script you want to launch in the PATH variable. According to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EnvironmentVariables you want to do this via
/etc/environment
. You could also create a ‘symbolic link’ to the binary or write a launch script which you then place into/usr/bin
or/usr/local/bin
. -
See 1.
-
For that you have to create a .desktop file and install it (make an entry in the menu to it) via xdg-desktop-menu.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Aviv , Answer Author : Gaff