Please Explain: qubes-menus And qubes-desktop-linux-common | Minimal Templates

User Support
1

I am a big fan of Qubes Minimal Templates (Fedora and Debian) and have been using them for years. I am quite familiar with them to the point that most of my VM templates and standalones are minimal ones. However, I have never been able to figure out what these two packages do:

  1. qubes-menus
  2. qubes-desktop-linux-common

Please explain to me what their purpose is.

Thanks for your amazing help!

2

see the ‘Description’ field of the following commands:

sudo dnf info qubes-desktop-linux-common 
[user@dom0 ~]$ sudo dnf info qubes-desktop-linux-common
Qubes OS Repository for Dom0                    2.9 MB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
Installed Packages
Name         : qubes-desktop-linux-common
Version      : 4.2.3
Release      : 1.fc37
Architecture : noarch
Size         : 539 k
Source       : qubes-desktop-linux-common-4.2.3-1.fc37.src.rpm
Repository   : @System
From repo    : qubes-dom0-cached
Summary      : Common code used for multiple desktop environments' Qubes
             : integration
URL          : http://www.qubes-os.org
License      : GPL
Description  : Common code used for multiple desktop environments' Qubes
             : integration
sudo dnf info qubes-menus 
[user@dom0 ~]$ sudo dnf info qubes-menus
Qubes OS Repository for Dom0                    2.9 MB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
Installed Packages
Name         : qubes-menus
Version      : 4.2.3
Release      : 1.fc37
Architecture : noarch
Size         : 171 k
Source       : qubes-desktop-linux-common-4.2.3-1.fc37.src.rpm
Repository   : @System
From repo    : qubes-dom0-cached
Summary      : Configuration and data files for the desktop menus
URL          : http://www.qubes-os.org
License      : GPL
Description  : This package contains the XML files that describe the menu layout
             : for GNOME and KDE, and the .desktop files that define the names
             : and icons of "subdirectories" in the menus.

You also got these infos in the github repository:
https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-desktop-linux-common/blob/main/rpm_spec/desktop-linux-common.spec.in

These packages are installed in dom0, not in the templates (minimal or not).
(You can confirm this with: sudo dnf list --installed, in dom0 and in the templates)

3

Awesome! Thanks a lot, I did not know about the info subcommand of dnf. Since I was wondering if I needed it for my minimal template setup, my question is answered.

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