How to add/remove menu entry for all users in a multiuser environment?

Support & Help Requests
1

I’m administering a multiuser installation (50 users).
In needing to customize and standardize the interface and in particular the menus for All users, i need to know how exactly to do it. Any advice please?

EDIT: i found something here:
https://help.gnome.org/admin/system-admin-guide/stable/
https://goo.gl/p9mLlr

but does not reflect completely the MATE environment… any guide like that for MATE?

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2

Well, applications in the menu are from one of two places:

  • System-wide: /usr/share/applications/
  • Local user: ~/.local/share/applications/

What you could do is:

  1. Clear out a local user’s applications, so only system-wide entries appear.

  2. Customise the menu using the menu editor.

  3. Either:

    a. Copy the new ~/.local/share/applications/ launchers (they look like duplicates) into /usr/share/applications/ (I haven’t tested this to be certain)

    or b. Use that user’s ~/.local/share/applications as a template and copy to everyone’s user account.

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3

Or if you want to use ~/.local/share/applications you could also copy an example to /etc/skel. Then whenever you create a new user these settings will be copied to the new users home directory.

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4

For users and groups management which might help, see also:

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5

Thanks a lot to everyone answered so quickly. :smile:
I’ll report here in detail the method i’ll use: i’ll focus myself on the easiest, practical and maintainable one.

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