Re: [tlug] Am I supposed to just know what I've installed?

["Neil Millar" <nmillar@example.com>]

On 23/03/07, Sigurd Urdahl <sigurdur@example.com> wrote:
> Dave M G wrote:
> > But, on a more general level, if I'm understanding you guys correctly,
> > there is no default behavior or expectation about how a program should
> > behave once installed. The responsibility is with the documentation...?
>
> I think that for properly or "well built" packages one could expect them
> to integrate with the the two major desktop environments, at least if...

I think the answer is: It depends. Because there's no standard desktop
environment/window manager, and there are graphical and command line
apps, and commercial apps that like to live in their own directory etc. then
it can be awkward.

I use Window Maker on debian and find that things like the gimp, terminals, etc
automatically go into my menu, so for packages like that as Sig says you
should expect the same on gnome or kde, they'll just appear somewhere in
your application menu.

For command line programs, typing the name of the package you downloaded
should work in the majority of cases.

Having a look in places like /usr/bin, /bin, /usr/local, /opt etc. you may find
it there.

If it's a commercial program or something you have compiled there should be
accompanying documentation that will tell you the name of the application
and the default installation folder.

As mentioned, querying the package and checking for files with bin in the
folder name should help. In this case you will probably find the package
has something called /usr/bin/gnome-tablet-properties and you can probably
even run that directly, outside of the general gnome control center.

If all this fails using find for files created/modified in the last X
minutes/hours may help.

If that fails it's someone telling you that you shouldn't run the application :)

Neil.