Alternative location for some installed packages?

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Quick Intro -
Linux user for 10 years - just transitioned from Linux Mint and love Manjaro XFCE - it is lightning fast, beautiful to look at, works flawlessly and uses far less CPU than Mint and most of the ‘light’ Linux distros I’ve tried.
Question - just a simple one - I installed ‘gedit’ text editor and it appears in Whisker Menu and can also be called up from the terminal - it works fine. But I cannot find it in usr/applications directory. I installed it from terminal, then un-installed and re-installed with Add/Remove in case that made a difference. But I can’t locate it. Are there some applications / packages that Manjaro stores somewhere other than the applications directory? Thanks.

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Hi @benslinux, and welcome!

I believe you’re looking for:

/usr/share/applications/

It contains the .desktop files for installed software, IIRC.

Edit:

AFAIK the .desktop files contain all the required info for running the program.

Edit #2:

What @Aragorn said. :point_down:

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Welcome to the forum!

Given that GNU/Linux is a UNIX system, there is no distinction between applications and system software. Executable files are generally stored in /usr/bin — in Manjaro and Arch, /bin and /sbin are symbolic links to /usr/bin.

The files in /usr/share/applications are merely .desktop files, which allow you to launch the application from within your desktop environment’s menus, or via an icon. But those are merely plain-text files. The actual application will be in /usr/bin, with shared libraries in /usr/lib64.

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Click on the package in Pamac (Add/Remove Software), on the right side, click on the Files tab, you see all the files location for this package.

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Or

pacman -Fl gedit

Or

pamac list --files gedit

It won’t: file localisations are defined in the package, not by the package manager.

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Thanks for the welcome and the replies - I did mean to write /usr/share/applications - but it was not located there with the other desktop applications. Then I remembered the ‘which’ command and found it - in /usr/bin - must be that certain applications like text editors are installed there.
Thanks again - this one is solved. Have to say again, that this is one fantastic distro - beautiful, and so fast.

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omano -

Thank you - great tip and I will remember it.

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no, its for all applications
for all linux (since 10 years)

  • applications in /usr/bin (or alias /bin/)
  • .desktop text files in /usr/share/applications/ (desktop is the entry in menu / gui launcher)
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papajoke - This is new information for me and I can see that all of my applications are indeed in usr/bin- but I’m still unclear. How and when is the .desktop file created? What makes the gedit text editor different from say, chromium browser? Chromium is in usr/bin and can be seen in usr/applications. Gedit is in usr/bin but not visible in usr/applications? Thanks.

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It’s packaged just like any other file in a package. You were already given commands how to list files in a package. If you look carefully you’ll see that gedit also includes a .desktop file.

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OK - looking in Pamac I do see the desktop file - /usr/share/applications/org.gnome.gedit.desktop. I mistakenly considered ‘gedit’ to be the name of the application, whereas it is actually ‘org.gnome.gedit’. Thanks for the education.

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