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I got Blender 2.58 (stable) from blender.org (downloaded the package, extracted it). Everything works fine, but the only thing that bugs me is that the icon in the launcher (when I open it) is really fuzzy. I guess that's no big deal, but when I select "Keep in Launcher" and close Blender, the icon doesn't work when I try to open it again.

Then, I created a Launcher on my desktop with the path to the blender executable, slapped on a shiny new non-fuzzy .svg icon that came with the package, and dragged the (desktop) Launcher to my (Unity) Launcher. Now, when I click on the new launcher, it keeps showing the flashing thing that says it's opening the program, and then the old fuzzy icon comes back but doesn't replace the new icon. Even after Blender opens, the new icon is still flashing.

What is wrong with my launcher?

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2 Answers 2

up vote 2 down vote accepted

You may want to use Blender from the ppa:
This will provide you with the svn version (weekly). These are usually stable, but if you want it to be truly stable, you can lock the version in synaptic. You can also get Blender 2.4 from this PPA.

To add this to your Unity Launcher, drag the icon from the Dash.*

The challenge with using Blender from the tarball on their website is that it will lack some of the desktop integration features you would get from installing a package that is built for the specific OS/distro.

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This is very well, but when I run the application, icon doesn't show up in the (Unity) Launcher at all. –  TreefrogInc Jun 23 '11 at 1:21
Nevermind... You have to drag the icon from the dash to the launcher. –  TreefrogInc Jun 23 '11 at 1:26
FYI the chelep ppa is no more –  Rob Agar Oct 22 '12 at 8:38

The thing you are missing is a .desktop file to tell the launcher about Blender.

Assuming you installed to /opt/blender, copy the following to /usr/share/applications/blender.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Comment=Blender 3D Graphics

Then search for blender in the dash, launch, right click the launcher icon and check Lock to Launcher

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