A very comprehensive reply Adrien. Julie, just in case the flatpack does not find your old files, it sounded like you have an identical copy on your portable. If so you can move the gnucash current file (you may have named it differently) from the portable to the other machine. If they are networked it is even easier.
Good luck. Geoff +33 6 22 93 00 53 +44 7770 58 48 38 > On 22 Oct 2026, at 19:56, Adrien Monteleone <[email protected]> > wrote: > > On 10/21/26 22:00, Julie G wrote: >> I DID IT! Thanking the people over at bugs.gnucash SO much. I copied the >> gnucash.desktop file from home to .local, opened it in a text editor, and >> changed line EXEC= from whatever it said to Exec=/usr/bin/env >> WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER=1 gnucash %f >> and then i made good notes about what I did, for future reference :-) >> when I now click on the icon for gnucash it works. > > Great! > > Thanks for reporting back so we know that worked. > >> Teeny misteak though. Someone in a forum who was trying to help me with >> this suggested in uninstall the flatpak version and install the ...regular? >> version. I don't know what is PC to call this version, maybe the >> non-flatpak version? Anyway, of desperation I did this without realizing >> all my saved report configurations would be deleted along with the >> program. This is on my desktop computer. I have them on my laptop version >> of gnucash, which is a flatpak. My question is, how might I uninstall the >> version on my desktop and *replace* it with the very same program off of my >> laptop? Is that a possibility? Seems like it could be. And then all my >> saved reports would be back? > > The non-flatpak is the standard 'repo' version. ('Repository') Each Linux > distribution maintains its own repository of software you can install. Those > versions are usually tested and compiled, and perhaps tweaked, to work with > your specific Linux distribution. Apps from those repositories come with > various extensions, but the most common you'll probably see is '.deb' or > '.rpm'. The '.deb' extension is used by the Debian Linux distribution and its > derivatives such as Ubuntu and Mint. (".rpm' is used by Fedora/RedHat and its > derivatives) > > If you are running the flatpak on your laptop and want to do the same on the > dekstop, simply install the flatpak version on the desktop. Either follow the > instructions on the wiki, or you may find it in your Software Center and you > can install it from there. While you can have both the .deb and flatpak > version installed, you probably want to remove the .deb version so you don't > accidentally launch the wrong one down the road. (user configuration files > are also stored separately for each version, so that can indeed lead to > confusion if you are not very meticulous about which one you use and when) > > It is possible your saved report configurations still exist on the desktop > computer. But they are where the flatpak used to look for them and now you > have the repo version which looks somewhere else. > > Get very familiar with the wiki section about Backups and Configuration > locations. It can take a few reads to get a good grasp of it, but after, > you'll be able to see where your file are stored and how to get to them. (and > what needs to be backed up!) > > >> A teeny other detail...When replacing what it said on the EXEC= line, I >> couldn't tell you what it used to say before I changed it. I tried going >> to the laptop and looking for that particular file there. However, i can >> not find the path where the gnucash.desktop file is saved, so i can't copy >> it to the .local folder, which I also can't find. I did find it through a >> search; there is probably only one .local folder, and because I hadn't put >> a copy of gnucash.desktop in it in the past, there wasn't one there. > > It probably just didn't have the 'WEBKIT' part in it, but all the rest. > > See the gnucash wiki about Backup and Configuration locations. As noted > above, they are different for flatpak vs. a regular 'repo' installation. > > Don't bother with this until you get it straightened out which version of the > app you want to run on both machines. > >> And finally, what is meant by gnucash.desktop? On my laptop would it be >> something different, or is this a different meaning of the word desktop? > > The file has the same name on both, but as noted above, they will be in > different locations depending on how the app was installed. > > Flatpaks are in their own 'sandbox' so they don't clobber or interfere with > other apps or important files. Their access to files on your drive is limited > to this sandbox. (unless you configure it otherwise) This is why the > configuration files are in one place with a flatpak installation and a > different place with a regular repo installation. > > Generically a '.desktop' file is used by Linux distributions as 'launchers'. > That is, when you click an icon to launch an app, what you are really doing > is opening the '.desktop' file for that app which then triggers the Exec > command line in that file, which is what launches the app itself, sometimes > with special parameters. (such as the WEBKIT workaround) Other things can be > specified in .desktop files such as the icon to display for it, and what menu > category to place it in. Without this .desktop file, you would have to > navigate every time to where the binary copy of the app is stored and launch > it from there, or use the command line directly to do so. This is analogous > somewhat to 'shortcuts' in the Windows world. > > Every app that appears in your menu has a .desktop file, usually as > "name_of_app.desktop". > > Regards, > Adrien > > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-user mailing list > [email protected] > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > ----- > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list [email protected] To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
