# Apps not showing and not working in Xfce4



## Alien72 (Oct 22, 2018)

After installing FreeBSD with Xfce, I used "pkg install"+the program name. The output indicated every attempt to acquire a new application was a success. However, a number of them didn't appear on the menu. Some malfunctioned. For example, K3b, used to burn disks, asked whether I had invoked Hald ( I had) and said it could not see a CD/DVD drive. This drive works in Linux Mint 19 and was used to install FreeBSD. One post said to complete the menu, I needed to edit /usr/local/share/.  So, to begin to iron this out, may I ask:
1. When pkg install grabs the app from the repository, where does it download it to, in general?
2. Do apps beginning with 'K' like K3b, KmPlot and more only work on a KDE gui for FreeBSD?
3. Does K3b have a problem irrespective of what desktop environment it's in? Why won't it "see" my working optical drive?
4. Are apps installed but not showing meant to be only executed from a command line?
5. Do the dependencies accompanying the apps only work on one DE or on several or on all?
I like the minimalist efficiency of Xfce but if  3/4 of the packages I install won't work or can't be found. It's over.


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## xtaz (Oct 22, 2018)

Xfce uses the freedesktop.org framework for interoperability with other desktop environments. As a result any application that installs a file in either /usr/local/share/applications or ~/.local/applications should appear in the menu structure. It might be worth checking that to see if any missing applications are in there or not.

KDE apps should work fine. Anything that you install should work in any environment. I once had KDE5, Gnome3, and Xfce4 on a test laptop and every package I installed just automatically appeared in all three. There may be something specific about the apps you tried which means they only work in KDE though, but I could see a lot of KDE apps in Xfce when I tested this so not sure.


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## Alien72 (Oct 23, 2018)

Greetings...I checked the two suggested directories.  All apps in /usr/local/share/applications had the form *.desktop and included   all apps on the gui menu.  ~/.local/share/applications  had no apps at all. A number of packages did not seem to live anywhere but would execute from the terminal. These included hoichess, gnuchess, openvpn, calc, pspp but in a terminal they were grim. 1 of 2..more>>>


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## Alien72 (Oct 23, 2018)

2 of 2......Ascii-invader wouldn't run even from terminal. As for K3b, this is 
a disc burner utility I used in Linux Mint and in that context,
it ran fine on Linux desktops like Gnome, Mate, Xfce, Cinnamon 
and naturally KDE. I did a $service start hal as K3b couldn't 
find an optical device and asked if HAL daemon was active.K3b
could be run from terminal or gui but would fail upon not
finding the DVD drive. Would you know where the base system
stores the executables one fetches from the repositories? Do I
need to transfer all executable files to any particular place?
The applications directory indicated the presence of a KDE4 
subdirectory. Do I need to alter or copy it's contents 
to make K3b work? Meanwhile,the package KmPlot was installed
and works from terminal and the RUN launcher on the desktop
but it doesn't show up on the menu. I need to make sense of
this. Any insights you could share would be appreciated...


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## Alien72 (Oct 24, 2018)

Thanks for the hint. However, besides the app problems, I have no audio despite a number of attempts and a posted help request. Lacking a response, I surmise the issue isn't common. So, I shall reformat the drive with Gparted with MBR and FAT32, re-install FreeBSD and KDE and hopefully "see" the Apps on a KDE menu.  After all, as the Romans said, "Tempus Fugit" and in 2018, one needs a GUI.


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