[spyder] Adding Spyder icon (Favorites bar) on Ubuntu 18.04

[f***@gmail.com]

Hi, not sure if this is a Spyder issue or a Ubuntu issue, but let's give it
a try here first.

I have freshly installed Ubuntu 18.04 and Anaconda (with Python 3.7) in my
laptop, and I'm now trying to set up a launch icon for Spyder - something
I've done many times in the past couple of years when running Ubuntu 16.

I can successfully run Spyder from the Terminal and it seems to be working
fine, but when I run it from the terminal and right-click the icon, it does
not give me an option for adding it to Favorites.

It seems I can manually add an icon for it by creating a .desktop file for
it, as described here
<https://askubuntu.com/questions/967409/cant-add-custom-desktop-files-to-ubuntu-dock>
and here
<https://askubuntu.com/questions/990833/cannot-add-custom-launcher-to-dock-add-to-favorites>;
I tired that, but Spyder does NOT show up in Applications after creating
the .desktop files. In fact, I get a generic "There was an error launching
the application" message when double-clicking the .desktop file. I even
tried using the "spyder.desktop" file in the Spyder Github, but to no avail.

Is this a known issue with Spyder and Ubuntu 18? Does anyone knows how to
sort this out?


As usual, many thanks for the great job and the wonderful support! :)
Kind Regards - Fabio