Hallo - ...back to linux after 15 years on the Dark Side

Anyone set me straight as to how to get Plasma Search (KRunner???) to do it's (surely) basic task...launch things?

I wasted hours as I had read it was integrated with Baloo, but now I'm not at all convinced of that.

Plasma Search has a plug-in architecture, and I have the "Applications" plug-in enabled....but what is it considering to be an "Application", and where is it looking?? - I can find no way of it picking up my scripts. It doesn't even seem to look in /usr/sbin...

-ideally I just want to point it to a directory of apps/scripts etc? - anyone know how to do that?

thanks all-
Oli.

Hi,

You can add your applications to the main menu (just right-click on it). Once it's there, KRunner will find it.
Instead of using the editor, you can also create .desktop files in ~/.config/menus (I think). You'll find examples in /usr/share/applications.

Louis

In modern linux desktop systems, the applications that show up in the menus and launchers aren't defined by the binaries stored in /usr/(local or shared or wherever)/(s)bin, but by application shortcut files with the .desktop extension. These are text files which describe the application including things like where the executable is (usually /usr/bin or /usr/share/bin), short and/or long names in various languages, menu categories, etc.

The location for the per-user *.desktop files is ~/.local/share/applications. When creating an application shortcut you can browse there in dolphin and then right-click -> Create New -> Link to Application. This will bring up a dialog for setting up the application shortcut. These should be automatically picked up by krunner and the menus.

Krunner should also have a Command Line plugin which allows you to run raw commands, either specifying an executable that's on the default PATH or the full path to the executable (plus any command-line arguments).

...thanks very much for the answers. I hadn't imagined that using the GUI was the way to go ...seems like I am a bit behind the times