RFE: Better integration with Linux desktop

There are few things that can be done (and can be easily done) to improve integration of Minecraft with the Linux desktop.

Launcher Distribution - Package Management

At the moment, the Minecraft Linux launcher is distributed as a jar file. It is worth considering packing said jar file in rpm and deb to ease installation of Minecraft on Linux systems.

Benefits of Package Management

• Package files include a list of dependencies, thus you can make sure users won't have to install Java manually to play Minecraft on Linux – The package manager will install it for them
• Packages are installable globally, for all users of the system. Thus, if the system is shared by more than one user, they would only need to download and install Minecraft once.
• Packages can be automatically updated using the system's native update manager. Having official Mojang repositories for rpm and deb packages will allow updating the launcher automatically for Linux users should the need to update the launcher ever arise

Desktop File – ie. A Menu Icon to Start Minecraft

This is not needed on windows, where double clicking on an exe file will launch it. But in Linux, a jar file will be opened with the system's default archive manager.

In order to add a usable menu icon, one should create a desktop file which include meta-data such as path to icon file (if Minecraft will ever be packaged as deb or rpm, such icon should be installed in /usr/share/icons/hicolor/256x256/icon-name-here.png), tags for search, application name, executable path and parameters.

Having a desktop file that'll put itself in the applications menu (system wide: /usr/share/applications or per-user: ~/.local/share/applications) will make it easier for novice Linux users to actually start Minecraft.

I can help

I know Linux has never been a high priority platform for Mojang, and I know your time is valuable. Therefore, if you want to implement my suggestion, I can make the desktop file and the rpm spec file for you (for free), as well as give you pointers on how to create software repository.