Creating shortcut links to launch applications:

Open a terminal (press Ctrl + Alt + T) and copy the target applications *.desktop file to your Desktop. e.g. for VLC Media Player the *.desktop the command would be:

cp /usr/share/applications/vlc.desktop ~/Desktop

Now make the copy on the desktop executable with using chmod. e.g.: for vlc.desktop it would be

chmod +x ~/Desktop/vlc.desktop

And then you should be able to launch the application by double clicking the icon on the desktop.

Searching the *.desktop file for the application:

If you need to make a little search for the proper *.desktop file for the target application using some related keywords (e.g. for vlc it could be vlc, media player or others), here's some codes that should help.

1. Direct search for the keyword in the filename:

   
   
   

   ls /usr/share/applications/*your_app_keyword*.desktop
   
   

   
   
   

   so if you're looking for vlc, it would be:

   
   
   

   ls /usr/share/applications/*vlc*.desktop
   
   




2. Searching the files contents to see if the keyword is there:

   
   
   

   For this, you can copy the entire line of codes below (select entire line and press Ctrl + C) and paste it in the terminal using the shortcut key combo Ctrl + Shift + V make changes to fit your context like you can replace the /usr/share/applications with the path where you want to look in and here I've used "media player" as the keyword which you should replace with that of your choice and hit enter. (Also remember to use the double quotes if you're using white spaces in your keyword.)

   
   
   

   for i in $( ls -R /usr/share/applications/*.desktop); do if grep -i "media player" "$i" > /dev/null; then echo "$i"; fi; done;
   
   

These should output some *.desktop file. See if they're the one you are searching for. If yes, that's your target *.desktop file to be used to create the application launch link as explained above.

An example with demonstrating the complete process:

The command:

$ for i in $( ls -R /usr/share/applications/*.desktop); 

  do if grep -i "rhythmbox" "$i" > /dev/null; then echo "$i"; 

  fi; done;

outputs these:

/usr/share/applications/rhythmbox.desktop

/usr/share/applications/rhythmbox-device.desktop

and among these, /usr/share/applications/rhythmbox.desktop starts the application's UI. So now we'll use this path to create a desktop launch icon.

To copy the file to your desktop, use:

$ cp /usr/share/applications/rhythmbox.desktop ~/Desktop

Then you'll have to make it executable with this:

$ chmod +x ~/Desktop/rhythmbox.desktop

Similarly, you have the other on your desktop.