KDE has done this in the past but it looks to be a bit untidy/impossible at the moment. The menu's are populated with what ever is in low level directories so the only way of correcting this seems to be to edit each users menu to not show the ones that aren't needed. That's assuming each user does have a separate start button menu. SDDM can do this if each user chooses to run a different desktop type but it's not clear how this can be done when all are using kde?

As this seems to be a pretty obvious thing to need to be able to do I suspect I am missing something. But what?

John
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How are you editing each users' menus?
I assume that if you edit the menus using KDE's Menu Editor (right-click on the menu button -> Edit Applications) (or even whatever corresponding menu editor is provided by whichever desktop they use) that it should save just for the current user (since most users shouldn't have permissions to edit the base system menu)

No it doesn't work like that according to the freedesktop org spec for xdg. All kde users use the same menu tree. If sddm is used for log in and one user chooses to use a different desktop that will use a different menu tree specifically for that desktop.

The menu's are in /etc/xdg/menus and kde claims to meet the spec. For some one who wants to do something with the xdg set up the spec isn't much use in imho. It needs some examples adding on how to do this sort of thing. It might even be out of date. Hence asking about it in my other post which relates directly to this area.

However user home based menu's have other problems if some one wants to use a different desktop so in my view a user home based directory for the desktop files is far more suitable even if all users are using kde. All a user need do then is copy the required desktop files across.

According to the spec user menus extend rather than over ride which doesn't fit in at all with scanning the application directories off /usr that have everything installed on the machine in it and using them to populate the menus. All the menus contain is categories also as I discovered recently info on where the desktop files are. I asked some where else and a link to this page was posted

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xdg-menu

Looking at that it may be possible to remove the default and add an <AppDir>. In some respects the menu tree that is used doesn't matter if this can be done other than each user will have have their own appdir so will need there own menu as well unless the appdir can be ~ based. The link suggests it can't be.

A right ruddy mess in my view so suspect I am missing something or docs aren't complete enough. I came across the problem by looking at the kde root account after I had installed a lot of applications. The start button menu was identical to my usual one. In the past it has been entirely different even down to just having konsole in it. I also installed lxde as a different user, not to change but just to see what happens. That changed the menu tree that was used - less categories but all desktops showed the same mix of lxde and kde applications in their menu's due to the way these are scanned off /usr and loaded into the menu structure. Logging in with SDDM to a particular desktop type does get the correct window management up and running. It looks to be well sorted out for that sort of thing so the main problem even if all are using kde is applications all being in one place.

On the other hand kde may have chosen to make some user based directories over ride the system wide ones. I recently found that kde5 can be configured this way - I wanted to disable bookmark searches. It just needed a desktop file copying to a ~ directory and setting enable in it to false Other than the fact it took a long time to find the information that's more like kde.

John
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I just added a menus folder to ~./config. This has the effect of over riding the system wide one and appears to copy the system wide one into it as soon as it's created. Logging in with SDDM appears to provide one specifically for KDE.

I then right clicked and deleted any unwanted ones in the menu editor. Looked ok so logged out and back in as root and that one still had the unwanted items in it so the user local menu was over riding the system one. Looking at the menu file it does this by adding a lot of excludes. Currently the basic menu tree is identical but I can now add categories that would be unique to me and move stuff around. Previously for instance on say graphics on 4 I had multiple categories, one for photography another for this and that etc. This has gone on 5 probably down to the desktop files provided. Not sure.

Ok it works but is rather tedious as I had collected a lot of lxde and some xfce stuff so having done utilities I still have plenty more to remove.

This all comes about because the desktop files are all off /usr and the lot are scanned into the menu trees and that's the way distro's install them.

Is there anyway I can make just the desktop files needed user local ?

John
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User local desktop files can be added to ~/.local/share/applications.