Where are the .desktop icon files stored?

Question

What system folder on Ubuntu 12.10 are the main menu .desktop icons stored at???

I am having trouble locating....

Solution

The .desktop link files are stored in /usr/share/applications for software installed for all users, and $HOME/.local/share/applications for things you have installed only for yourself.

The actual icon (image) files are a bit more scattered (since a .desktop file can specify their absolute path), but /usr/share/pixmaps and /usr/share/icons contain a good fraction of them. (icons at $prefix/share/icons/ with required fall-back version in hicolor theme can be loaded without the full path, thus such as Icon=video-display where $prefix can be /usr, /usr/local or ~/.local; See specification at freedesktop.org: Icon Theme Specification )

Comments

[Gabriel Staples]

Note that many of the icons don't require a full path--you can just use their name and it works. Example: I found this icon I like here: /usr/share/icons/gnome/16x16/devices/input-touchpad.png. So, if I just set the Icon to Icon=input-touchpad inside my *.desktop file, it turns out it works just fine!