I downloaded some games from Humble Indie Bundle and now I can open them only from Nautilus and not from the applications menu, which is impractical, because usually if I want to play a game I go to "Games" under the applications menu and decide what to play, or I search the applications menu for it (from activities). I don't want to have to search two different places.
1 Answer
Create Launcher
First install gnome-panel using the following command in terminal (ctrl+alt+t)-
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends gnome-panel
You can either create it for your own or for all users.
To create a custom launcher for yourself(current user), type in terminal-
gnome-desktop-item-edit ~/.local/share/applications/ --create-new
or for system wide users, type :
sudo gnome-desktop-item-edit /usr/share/applications/ --create-new
A window to create launcher will open up. Fill in the -
- Name of the application (in your case the specific game).
- command field, either add the executable command or browse and navigate to /usr/bin/ (where the applications are installed) and select your application or game.
- Comment field for description (optional).
Click OK. You are good to go. The launcher is created. It will be available in the activities overview.
Categorising
Say you created a launcher with name, indy-game. A file indy-game.desktop will be created in /usr/share/applications or /home/$USER/.local/share/applications
To make it available in the games section or any other category,
*open a terminal and type-
cd /usr/share/applications
then,
sudo gedit indy-game.desktop
(replace indy-game with your launcher name)
*In the editor window that opens up, in the categories field add Game at the end and put a semicolon. It should look something like,
Categories=GNOME;GTK;Game;
Done. You will have the launcher for the game available in the games category now. Create separate launcher for every game or application you want.
Hope this helps. :)