Application launcher does not work

Support & Help Requests
#1

I put this as an application launcher, but it does not work?

 crontab -e
#2

First, it must be “Application in Terminal”. By default this will open in xterm or other terminals as opposed to mate-terminal.

A little on this xterm thing and my personal workaround (that still works in 18.04) but assumes gnome-terminal is not installed:

2 Likes
#3

I created it the first method. It used nano and it’s font are too small for my eyes.

There’s many solutions, including forgetting the “Application in Terminal” altogether and just run mate-terminal with the -e option but I wanted to have my cake and eat it, too. And it’s a one-time command:

  sudo ln /usr/bin/mate-terminal /usr/bin/gnome-terminal

 Viola! This creates a gnome-terminal hardlink pointing to mate-terminal.

Do I just run the sudo line from any terminal?

And how do I use it to create a an application in terminal?

#4

That small font is because it is likely xterm which hasn’t been setup.

Yes, any terminal creates that link. No need to change the launcher if it is type “Application in Terminal”.

When an “Application in Terminal” launcher is run, it looks for a list of possible installed terminals and xterm is the one it finds first. It turns out gnome-terminal is in that list before xterm so we fake out gnome-terminal is available BUT it really points to mate-terminal. A very easy workaround.

I would never run crontab from a launcher. When I exit I like the confirmation changes have or have not been made which is lost.

#5

I have crontab setup so it uses mate-terminal automatically.

How do I switch it back?

#6

sudo rm /usr/bin/gnome-terminal

#7

I don’t have gnome-terminal.

I remembered why I did.

I made this change in .bashrc.

  #This lets crontab editing by geany
 #It's best to leave crontab editing to nano !!
 #export EDITOR="geany"