I’m a Linux novice and installed Stata 18 on my new Ubuntu 24.10 dual boot laptop. But! Stata doesn’t show up as an installed program in my launcher. I found the installed files, including the executable for the GUI-based version of Stata 18 (“xstata-se”) in the /usr/local/stata18/ folder. I wanted to make a desktop shortcut to that folder but there doesn’t seem to be an option to make a shortcut from the Ubuntu file launcher. Instead, I followed the directions from the user ‘forester’ here and did it from the terminal.

Pop open your terminal by clicking ctrl+alt+T and plop in the text that follows, substituting your user name where indicated below

sudo ln -s /usr/local/stata18/ /home/[your user name]/Desktop  

After you enter your password, a new link should appear on your desktop

FYI: If you are using a different version of linux, the number will be different for the Stata folder (e.g., stata19).

Also, I had tried to create a desktop link to the xstata-se file itself, but clicking the link wouldn’t run Stata. Popping open the parent folder that the executable lives in is pretty close so I’ll stick with it.