Fixing missing menu entries of Opera and Skype in Debian GNU/Linux

Unfortunately the third-party packages of Opera and Skype do not contain menu entries for the Debian menu system. Not very surprisingly one might think, but I just think it’s sloppy. If you, like me, like the Debian menu system and want Opera and Skype available in it, do the following to solve that, until the packagers have included the menu entry files themselves:

(Update: I noticed that Opera has apparently had a menu entry in its package before, but has now removed it. It’s explained in this post, but I still think that was a bad choice.)

To override, or in this case add menufiles in Debian, one should put the files in /etc/menu. Put the following in /etc/menu/opera:

?package(opera):needs="x11" section="Applications/Network/Web Browsing" \
  title="Opera" command="/usr/bin/opera" hints="Web browsers" \
  icon="/usr/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/apps/opera-browser.xpm"

And the following in /etc/menu/skype:

?package(skype):needs="X11" section="Applications/Network/Communication" \
        title="Skype" \
        longtitle="Skype" \
        icon="" \
        command="skype"

Then run ‘update-menus‘ after you have added the above files to update the menu system, and have Opera and Skype available in your window manager’s menus.