A desktop file is standardized configuration file for Linux desktops that describe how to represent a program in the menus (complete with multiple language support), and how to launch it. So you can't just launch it directly because it doesn't mean anything to the command line. It should however be showing up in your menus now and so you can put it in your favorites and easily launch it that way.

That being cause, you can kinda turn it into an executable by adding something like the following to the very top of the desktop file:
#!/usr/bin/kioclient5 exec

That will tell the system to execute the desktop file with kioclient... of course you need to be running KDE for that to work correctly. I'm not sure what the GNOME equivalent of that command is.

Personally I would just pretty alt+F2 or alt+space may work as well and just start to type "Sandboxed Web Browser" and you may only have to type Sand or so before you can press enter and have it launch.

Alternatives to starting it from the command line:
Create a file called sandfox in /usr/local/bin/ and put the following into it.
#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/firejail --apparmor firefox $@

Then set it to be executable and then you can execute sandfox from anywhere.

You could also set and alias with:
alias sandfox="/usr/bin/firejail --apparmor firefox"

That will allow you to type sandfox and internally it will replace that with "/usr/bin/firejail --apparmor firefox". That should also work in most places equally well, but only for your username.
That's a one shot way of making that available. If you want it to be permanent you'll need to add that line to your .bashrc file with:
echo alias sandfox='"/usr/bin/firejail --apparmor firefox"' >>~/.bashrc

I can't remember what your original goals were, so I hope the above isn't completely shooting the dark.

Brian Cluff

On 3/19/21 10:25 PM, Steve B via PLUG-discuss wrote:

I took Brian's recommendation and created a file in ~/.local/share/applications called sandfox.desktop. Contents of that file are:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Type=Application
Icon=/home/steve/Pictures/firejailed_firefox128.png
Exec=/usr/bin/firejail --apparmor firefox
Name=Sandboxed Web Browser
Terminal=false

I have it set to executable but when i try to run it "./sandfox.desktop" I get the error:

./sandfox.desktop: line 1: [Desktop: command not found
./sandfox.desktop: line 5: --apparmor: command not found
./sandfox.desktop: line 6: Web: command not found

Is my file misconfigured or what do I not have correct?

On Fri, Dec 25, 2020 at 5:47 PM Brian Cluff via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:

Under debian based distros, overriding an overwrite of ANY installed file is easily done.
There's a really cool tool called dpkg-divert that the system uses to take whatever files would normally be installed and steer them into a different place so that you can put your own version of the file in the same place without fear of it going away on the next update.

Just do:
dpkg-divert --add --rename /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop

In this case, that would be the overkill and less correct way of handing the problem. A better way would be to put your own version of the firefox.desktop into certain directories and that cause it to override the system version of the config. Put them in ~/.local/share/applications/ to change an individual user and /usr/local/share/applications/ to effect every user on the system.

Brian Cluff
---------------------------------------------------
PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss