How to set my application's desktop icon for Linux: KDE, Gnome etc?

Question

I have a cross platform program that runs on Windows, Linux and Macintosh. My windows version has an Icon but I don\'t know how to make have one for my Linux build. Is there a s

Answer 1

If you are using one of the pre-baked F/OSS build systems, such as KDE's CMake support, it's really rather easy once you have a .desktop file:

install( FILES myapp.desktop DESTINATION ${XDG_APPS_INSTALL_DIR} ) kde4_add_app_icon(myapp_SRCS "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/hi*-app-myappname.png")

If you are rolling your own, consider using xdg-utils, which includes handy little scripts like xdg-desktop-menu (installs desktop menu items) and xdg-desktop-icon (installs icons to the desktop) for such things.

The .desktop standard was already pointed out in the first comment, though you can also just grab one that is already installed on your system and modify it from there. As for icons, PNGs and SVGs are geerally supported though PNGs tend to give the best results still.