HOWTO: Have a menu which shows all installed applications on your system

[jobezone]

Howto have a menu which shows all installed applications on your system

Explanation

As any new user to ubuntu will notice, not every package they install on their system through the Package Manager will show up in the Applications menu.
Gnome and KDE use a recent standard, developed inside the freedesktop.org's project, for a common menu format, which means that application developers only have to add a few lines of text to their application, and it will be automatically shown in both desktops. XFCE also uses this standard.
The bad news is, that this standard is so recent, most of the applications available in the Ubuntu repositories still aren't packaged with this information.
The good news is that Debian has had their own menu system up and running for years, with every package in their repositories adding themselves to the Debian menu.
The excelent news is that you can install this Debian menu in Ubuntu and make use of it!

Installation

1. Launch the Package Manager (Synaptic)
2. Go to Settings->Repositories
3. Activate the Universe repository
4. Search for and install the packages named "menu" and "menu-xdg"
5. Run in the Console:

sudo update-menus

Look in your Applications menu, and you will have a new menu called Debian with all the applications you installed using synaptic, apt-get or individual .deb packages. Aditional applications you install using these methods will be placed there, as the update-menu is automatically run when a package is found to be using the debian menu.

You can also place the Debian menu on the panel (thanks to atilasendil for the hint):
Right click on the panel, and choose "Launcher from menu", click next and add Debian.

For Kubuntu, the instructions are the same, and the Debian menu will be placed in the "K" menu.
Other desktop environments should (or could?) use Debian menu, but if they don't, there's still use of it.

1. Install pdmenu either from Synaptic, or running in a terminal:
   

   sudo apt-get install pdmenu

2. From a console, run

pdmenu

which will give the Debian menu in ncurses.

More information

After you've installed "menu", you'll have full documentation of it in your system in this directory:
/usr/share/doc/menu/
The manual is in:
/usr/share/doc/menu/html/

Troubleshooting
For some people, the Debian menu may not appear immediately in Gnome, nor in the pdmenu application. This happened to me also, when I reinstalled ubuntu hoary. But it can be solved:

1. Log out of Gnome
2. Do Ctrl+alt+F1 and login with your username
3. Do:
   

   sudo update-menus

4. Run

   pdmenu

   , if you've installed it(see above), and make sure the debian menu is working
5. Get back to Gnome
6. Get and install "smeg", the menu editor, from http://www.realistanew.com/projects/smeg/
7. Open smeg, and make the Debian menu visible

Kubuntu specific troubleshooting, added by Firetech:

If you, like me, accidentally have deleted the debian menu earlier (because it was empty, and thus not showing anyway in the K-menu) follow these steps to get it back (AFTER following jobezone's guide!):

1. Open a Konsole window (or any other terminal you prefer).
2. Type

   nano ~/.config/menus/applications-kmenuedit.menu

   and press Enter.
3. Press Ctrl+W and type "Debian" (without quotes) and then press Enter.
4. If you get to the following text, delete it:
   

   <Menu> <Name>Debian</Name> <Deleted/> </Menu>

   If you don't get to exactly that text, try again by pressing Ctrl+W and then Enter. (You don't need to type "Debian" again.)
5. After deleting the above text (you can delete entire lines with Ctrl+K) press Ctrl+O and then Enter to save the file. (If you've made something wrong, E.G. deleting too much or something like that, press Ctrl+X and start over from step 2)
6. Press Ctrl+X to exit nano.
7. Type

   kmenuedit

   in the console and press Enter.
8. Just press the save button in the menu editor (I know the debian menu isn't showing.), and then exit that program.
9. Open your K-menu, and there should be a Debian menu at the top.

This IS working, I've tried it twice. (I actually deleted it once more to get more precise in this guide...)

(If it doesn't show even if you haven't deleted the menu, you can try it. You'll probably get stuck on step 4 in that case...)

[Karlos]

I've got a wierd thing happening with my menus

when I run update menus

I installed kubuntu into an ubuntu installation but decided it was a bit buggy so I removed it via removing the kde-core, which seemed to remove all of the kde stuff

but

update menus hasn't removed any of the kde stuff from the debian menu

does anyone know why ???

[thechitowncubs]

I don't like this, how can I remove it from my gnome-menu?

[jobezone]

I don't like this, how can I remove it from my gnome-menu?

sudo apt-get remove menu ?

[thecrimsonking]

Thanks jobzone. Takes away the annoyance of having to remember all those console commands for all the apps not in the menu.

[metaldclxvi]

this one didn't work for me i have no new menu....

[SteveyDevey]

this one didn't work for me i have no new menu....

It didn't do much for me, either. I'm running kubuntu, you said it would work, so I gave it a try.

It seems to have installed, but not given me a menu. I got no errors from any of the steps (except that I couldn't get Synaptic to run, since afaik, kubuntu uses Kynaptic instead (and I beleive you have to edit your repository listings by hand, which I've done already). I had already added the Universe listing I believe. I did "apt-get install menu" and it did. I told it to "update-menus" and it did. It created the directories "/usr/share/doc/menu/" and "/usr/share/doc/menu/html/", and I skimmed through the manual. I've got no "application menu" though, and I'm guessing it's either because I was having trouble with KDE pooping on itself (update problems because of kdelibs), or because there just isn't an "application menu" in KDE

Did I miss something, or is there another step that's been forgotten? Thanks.

[mrbass]

Hopefully we'll have namely or quicksilver (both on mac) for gnome soon.
http://developer.imendio.com/wiki/GNOME_Launch_Box
We can only hope and dream. Basically you just type first few letters then it shows matches and you press arrows keys and ENTER to launch app. I use namely even with Tiger as it shaves about 2 seconds off from using spotlight.

[jobezone]

It didn't do much for me, either. I'm running kubuntu, you said it would work, so I gave it a try.

It seems to have installed, but not given me a menu. I got no errors from any of the steps (except that I couldn't get Synaptic to run, since afaik, kubuntu uses Kynaptic instead (and I beleive you have to edit your repository listings by hand, which I've done already). I had already added the Universe listing I believe. I did "apt-get install menu" and it did. I told it to "update-menus" and it did. It created the directories "/usr/share/doc/menu/" and "/usr/share/doc/menu/html/", and I skimmed through the manual. I've got no "application menu" though, and I'm guessing it's either because I was having trouble with KDE pooping on itself (update problems because of kdelibs), or because there just isn't an "application menu" in KDE

Did I miss something, or is there another step that's been forgotten? Thanks.

My brother uses KDE, in this computer, and and he also got a Debian menu in it. Make sure you have the latest kde, try loging out and into KDE. Also, try creating a new user, and starting KDE with it, and see if it appears. If it does with that new user, the problem must be your own KDE configurations. If it doesn't appear as well... I don't know, make sure you ran update-menus using sudo! Also, check out the /usr/lib/menu , this is where all the menu entries are placed system-wide.


sorry, made the correction: /usr/lib/menu

[jobezone]

I've got a wierd thing happening with my menus

when I run update menus

I installed kubuntu into an ubuntu installation but decided it was a bit buggy so I removed it via removing the kde-core, which seemed to remove all of the kde stuff

but

update menus hasn't removed any of the kde stuff from the debian menu

does anyone know why ???

Were talking about the "Debian" menu,

Make positively sure that those KDE apps are uninstalled (try synaptic). I think that they should have been removed from the Debian menu. If you want to be quick and drastic, go to /usr/lib/menu and see if those unwanted apps are there, and delete them.

Debian should automatically remove menu entries from packages you uninstalled, but nevertheless you could try removing them with the "purge" option, which removes all the package's configurations.