DOC: Document Linux desktop workaround

[larsoner]

Closes #12899

[larsoner]

https://output.circle-artifacts.com/output/job/922b0a68-23aa-4440-a16f-d5281e271f9b/artifacts/0/html/install/advanced.html#fixing-dock-icons-on-linux

[hoechenberger]

shouldn't we simply deploy this file ourselves on MNE startup if it doesn't exist? like we do for the MNE config file too

because these steps ... nobody is gonna do this, don't you think?

[larsoner]

Seems too invasive to me to do it automagically. It's easy enough for people to edit and save this file if they want

[hoechenberger]

But they also need to manually download an image ... I don't know. I mean I'm okay with keeping these instructions (and thanks for writing them down!) but I'd be surprised if more than, say, 5 people will ever follow them 🤨 Meaning we'll look ugly on the vast majority of Ubuntu workstations. Not great.

[drammock]

Seems too invasive to me to do it automagically. It's easy enough for people to edit and save this file if they want

FWIW I think of things like icons and desktop files as normal/expected part of installing new GUI-based tools, so to me it doesn't seem invasive. I was assuming there was some technical limitation (permissions etc) but looking again I see that everything goes in ~/, so I'd be fine with the installer putting the icon in ~/.mne/icons/ and putting the .desktop file in ~/.local/share/applications (and as long as those files get cleaned up during uninstall).

[larsoner]

FWIW I think of things like icons and desktop files as normal/expected part of installing new GUI-based tools... I'd be fine with the installer putting the icon in ~/.mne/icons/ and putting the .desktop file in ~/.local/share/applications (and as long as those files get cleaned up during uninstall).

Totally agree -- the installer already installs stuff here and with conda-forge/mne-feedstock#139 shortly our installers will do this. I think the discussion/suggestion @hoechenberger made is about MNE-Python itself (rather than the installer) creating files under ~/.local. This to me is too invasive as there is no reasonable user expectation that import mne will add such GUI-related files.

(And as a side note, sadly there isn't an uninstaller to complement our Linux installer script but we do at least have instructions for how to uninstall manually, including the .desktop files that the installer produces.)

[hoechenberger]

We're creating a config file without asking too, I don't see how this is any different

For me the real question is: How do we want to present ourselves by default? Ugly with a generic icon, or pretty with a useful, identifiable icon. So it's also a question of aesthetics and accessibility

Creating a small text file to achieve better aesthetics and a11y is a small price to pay IMHO

[drammock]

I think the discussion/suggestion @hoechenberger made is about MNE-Python itself (rather than the installer) creating files under ~/.local. This to me is too invasive as there is no reasonable user expectation that import mne will add such GUI-related files.

ah oops, I missed that distinction.

We're creating a config file without asking too, I don't see how this is any different [...] Creating a small text file to achieve better aesthetics and a11y is a small price to pay IMHO

it would also mean shipping a binary (logo) file in our wheel I think (not just a text file). But that aside: to me it's annoying but acceptible if a python package creates a dotted config dir in ~ (I prefer it when packages/programs create those in ~/.config/ instead). But it does seem a bit invasive for import mne to have side effects in other places in the filesystem.

I feel like it used to be the case that matplotlib windows would get the MPL logo in the doc (just tried it and on my machine I see a blurry/pixelated version of the python snakes --- but I also just updated from 22.04 to 24.04 so maybe I'm seeing the same behavior change as @larsoner?) Anyway I bring that up because I'm on the fence, and if I knew MPL were installing .desktop files into ~/.local/share/applications then I wouldn't feel so bad doing it ourselves.

[larsoner]

Correct MPL also used to get a matplotlib icon and no longer does for me as well. I'm happy with escalating to their level since they think a lot harder about UI design and we can do whatever they decide