Given the deskopen script, you can use a reference to it as the shebang line in a .desktop file

this is so stupid (that there is no sensible way to run a Desktop file from the terminal)

gtk-launch <app-name> - where <app-name> is the file name of the .desktop file, with or without the .desktop extension.

I find it convenient to change proxy and other settings through gui window by right-clicking on launcher icon on my desktop. I mostly start slack by clicking desktop launcher, but also want to be able to start it from command line in some cases.

If you really want this, I suggest you write a little function that extracts the executable name from the .desktop file and runs it. Add these lines to your shell's initialization file (e.g. ~/.bashrc): runDesktop () { eval "$(awk -F= '$1=="Exec"{$1=""; print}' "$1")" } Then, you can run your .desktop file with runDesktop ~/Desktop/slack.desktop

We could add heuristics like: is the file inside XDG_DATA_DIRS/applications? if not, is the file inside XDG_DATA_HOME/applications? if not, is the file marked as executable? if not, open with the text editor

Hello , since I made a modification in gio-tool (#2098 (closed)) , I seen this issue and decide to give it go. I implemented an unix only solution only for launching a desktop file through gio command, see !1779 (merged)

When one is searching for it on the internet, there are many many people wondering how one can open .desktop files. It seems trivial, since one usually just has to click an item on the launcher so one thinks there must be some way.

I have to agree with Raphael here that this should probably be handled in gnome-open, its a pain to have to implement .desktop parsing code in every beagle front end when I can't really think of an instance where the expected behavior wouldn't be to execute the associated command.

I don't know what nautilus does, but i think when you double click a .desktop file it launches the associated program, i guess they don't use gnome-open then..

deskbar should probably detect their extension and execute the relevant command as opposed to opening the file for editing.

Is somehow possible to run a "Desktop Entry" from another "Desktop Entry"?