I'm using Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. I want to create a shortcut on my desktop for a program I've just installed (VLC media player). I've already done it for Google Chrome, so I do the same and I go to /usr/share/applications, but I can't find any .desktop file related to VLC there.
(In case you may be asking, yes I've installed GNOME Tweaks and yes I've enabled "Show icons".)
So, how can I create a shortcut on my desktop?
Since you don't find a .desktop launcher for VLC in /usr/share/applications/, it seems you installed the snap version of VLC instead of the traditional one. In that case you would find the associated .desktop file in the /var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/ directory.
If you wish you can also create a .desktop launcher manually by various GUI and CLI ways, refer to this: How can I edit/create new launcher items in Unity by hand?
After upgrading to Ubuntu 22.10, I noticed my vlc.desktop was gone for some reason, which broke xdg-open.
I now understood that this is because I had vlc-bin and vlc-data installed, which allows me to run vlc, but I didn't have the vlc package itself for some reason I don't understand, which is the one that contains /usr/share/applications/vlc.desktop.
So running:
sudo apt install vlc
fetched that file and solved the issue for me.
