the .desktop file generated by distrobox does not work

[Heus-Sueh]

I try to open it but nothing happens it seems the error has to do with terminal not being gnome terminal or konsole
I don't know if the error has to do with the desktop patheon or distrobox

[electricduck]

Moved this to a discussion as it's not a bug related to the OS itself, but isn't an invalid issue either.

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(Disclaimer: this answer is based on my rudimentary knowledge of GNOME/Glib, some quick research, and my own personal experience)

So, Terminal= is a bit of an odd one in a .desktop file as it behaves differently depending on the DE. DEs using glib — so GNOME and Pantheon — have a hardcoded list of terminals to look through to launch from, and it seems Pantheon Terminal is missing from that list. You can try this yourself by doing gtk-launch fedora-37.desktop: you'll see it spit out an error that it cannot find a terminal.

There's also the property in dconf at org.gnome.desktop.applications.terminal exec which is set to io.elementary.terminal, but it doesn't seem this does anything.

You have two workarounds, however:

1. Launching Pantheon Terminal directly:

• Adjust the Exec property to be /usr/bin/io.elementary.terminal -x /usr/bin/distrobox enter fedora-37
• Adjust the TryExec property to be /usr/bin/io.elementary.terminal

2. Bash wrapper

Create a file at /usr/local/bin/gnome-terminal and add the following contents:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
shift
io.elementary.terminal -x $@

Don't forget to set it as executable too (sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/gnome-terminal).

Since /usr/local/bin/ is in your $PATH, glib will search for gnome-terminal in there too and should fire it up; this command acts as a stub to redirect it to Pantheon Terminal. I would hardcode this into Sodalite itself, but it will make it impossible to install GNOME Terminal afterwards, which some users might legitimately need.

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I also noticed you have a few errors in your desktop file:

• Category should be Categories
• You've gone a dangling quote (") after your categories

Further Reading

• https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/333661/how-to-specify-which-terminal-is-used-by-gtk-launch
• https://askubuntu.com/questions/76712/setting-nautilus-open-terminal-to-launch-terminator-rather-than-gnome-terminal/294430#294430

[Heus-Sueh]

the second option worked thanks 👍

[Heus-Sueh]

for now I think it would be good to deliver this Bash wrapper along with the distro, because maybe someone will have a similar problem

[electricduck]

for now I think it would be good to deliver this Bash wrapper along with the distro, because maybe someone will have a similar problem

I would, but as explained, it will cause problems if you need to install GNOME Terminal afterwards, since there would be a package collision and it would fail to install.

Terminal= in desktop files is a very rarely used anymore — I'm gonna be honest, I didn't end know it still worked! — so it's a fairly non-issue currently.