Problem = I want an icon on my desktop to open Lightburn. I’ve got other desktop icons to open various programs but I don’t seem smart enough to make it happen with LB.
Os = Linux Mint 19.2 (Cinnamon)
Lightburn = 0.9.09
I’ve downloaded today’s latest & greatest LB and extracted it to my folder of choice (Programs -> Lightburn) and there’s an assortment of “stuff” in the folder including an icon for the LB program and an AppRun icon that says “Link to Program”. I can click either of those and LB opens just fine.
I thought I could just drag the AppRun link to the desktop, but that doesn’t work and says the link is broken. So I tried moving the LB program icon to desktop but that doesn’t work either. I tried copy & paste to desktop with the same results.
I feel kind of stupid that I don’t know how to do this.
I’m sure the problem is that I’m a relatively new and clueless Linux user, but maybe someone here could give me a gentle shove in the right direction.
OMG, stumped The Mighty OZ! Gonna write this day down on my calendar…
But seriously, I know we Linux users are a very small and troublesome percentage of your users, but we REALLY do appreciate your efforts and support to make it happen for us. Thank you!
Adam has talked about it before. If I’m not mistaken, you put an icon file in some common location with the correct name, but that’s a fuzzy memory at best. @DougL might know - he’s pretty Linux savvy too.
I usually just put a ‘.desktop’ file into ~/Desktop directory. I’ll update on where the lightburn.desktop file is. Ok, there is no default lightburn.desktop file but here’s what I have in mine and take note of the commented out lines. One is the original exec line and I wanted to get my camera working and it required me to include a gstreamer directory from ubuntu 16.04. If you don’t need that, then uncomment the original and delete the customized one.
@Hank which Linux download did you get? The .run file or the .7z file? Sounds like the latter… or you got the .run and unzipped it anyways.
So, I guess this needs to be documented somewhere…
The new .run file needs to be executed not extracted. Because google drive is dumb you need to chmod +x the file and run it or call bash ./LightBurn-Linux64-v0.9.09.run
This will run an internal setup script that will install the application shortcuts and everything you desire
I thought he wanted a desktop launch icon. Using the *.run file is still the best way to go for most people but I personally like knowing where and controlling where applications go. I’ve not been a Windows user for a very long time so I’m not used to installing and not knowing where things are even when there’s a working launch icon.
But I just learned that KDE 5 doesn’t create a desktop launch icon when you copy a *.desktop file to the ~/Desktop directory. But I can drag and drop that lightburn.desktop file from the GUI file browser onto the desktop and it creates a pretty launchable icon. Unfortunately it doesn’t accept the GST_PLUGIN_SYSTEM_PATH env setting so I will launch from my own script until I figure out what the system wants/needs. in my ~/bin directory is a bash script named lightburn
When he said Desktop icon I assume he meant an entry in the Desktop environment program listings.
I can’t remember the last time I even had anything on my desktop at all in Linux.
In terms of installing wherever you want, you can do LIGHTBURN_INSTALL_PATH=~/My/Lightburn/Path/ bash ./LightBurn*.run
And it will use the given path.
@DougL for which OS are you running KDE and have to set GST_PLUGIN_SYSTEM_PATH ?
Ya, my desktop is bare also but when I do custom bootable ISO’s I will place a bunch of project specific icons on the desktop. For LightBurn, it would include a LightBurn icon, Inkscape icon and maybe a Firefox icon with the default home tabs setup to Oz’s videos and other laser cutting pages.
I’m running kubuntu 18.04 and for some reason the gstreamer setup is off such that LightBurn can’t use the camera. But when I set the gstreamer path to one I grabbed from 16.04 it works perfectly fine.
Adam & Doug, thanks for the replies! I appreciate your help.
I’m not sure if I’m less confused now or more, but I’ll have chance to mess with it some this weekend.
I downloaded the .7z file and unzipped it, not the .run file.
I’ll download the .run file and give a try as suggested in Adam’s first post.
And yes, I do like to have a few of my favorite programs and some of the current projects I’m working on parked on my desktop for easy access.
@Hank the *.run file will, by default, install LightBurn into your ~/.local/share directory and add an launcher to your application menus under Graphics section. On subsequent reruns/updates it will clear out ~/.local/share/LightBurn and install the new software.
if you are a commandline type it will not add anything to your PATH. If you run the installer as root(sudo …) then it installs into the system and you should still get an application launcher but not sure if it’s in the /usr/bin or use/local/bin directory and commandline accessable.
the *.7z give you another way to install it on your system in a more manual way. Should be a lightburn.desktop file there IMO but those are pretty easy to create yourself.
The key was to use the .run file instead of the .7z.
I originally downloaded the .7z file because it was smaller and when you live in the country with crappy internet smaller is better. I just figured the only difference was that I had to unzip it which is no big deal…
Once I downloaded the .run file everything worked smooth as silk and added the launcher to my applications menu just like Doug said it would. I’m a happy camper now. Thanks!
