And I got a nasty PM from the OP as well, goumba, about how he's not being treated 'fairly'. I'm done too.

I appreciate your help.

You have a great deal of intelligence, of which I am most appreciative.

That is being honest.

You have 18K posts.

What does the many of your distros that are on your profile have anything to do with my posts ??

You spend a lot of time keeping track of how much time I have posted here.

PLEASE, do not treat me like a child.

Apparently, you either ignore what's said, or don't understand it.

You keep posting things like this:
...essentially saying "I don't have to tell you what distro/version I'm using, because it's in my profile!!!". The point is very simple: many people list MANY THINGS in their profile, so saying you somehow shouldn't have to give details is wrong. You do.
Spend no time at all on what you've done. In case you missed it in what you posted, the amount of time you've been here is ALSO on your profile (and shows up in the 'left of every post'), along with number of posts. Again, after 3 years, you should be well aware of needing to provide details when asking a question. Having to be asked multiple times and giving pushback about doing so isn't good.
Then do not behave as one.

On Mint MATE, I used right click->Create Launcher on the desktop to create a link. In the "Search Properties" window that opened, I entered the name "Search" and the command as you suggest (although I personally wouldn't hard-code my passwords into my commands, and you should use gksudo not sudo). I then clicked on the image of the spring and changed the icon to something else by browsing to the image and clicking "Open". It worked fine.

Try this series of actions and let us know at which point and how it fails.

Been tried already, according to the OP, and there are no messages/feedback/ANYTHING to help diagnose anything.

I made a launcher for it.

But I when I double click it, nothing happens.

I wonder if Mate does not see the script as being able to start a program and thus does not know what to do with it ?

But what we're talking about here is not whether the launcher will actually run the command (that's a separate issue), it's whether or not you can change the launcher icon.

While you're creating the launcher, do you see the "spring/launcher" image in the top left of the "Search Properties" window? If so, does clicking on that image allow you to change the icon?

If what you posted in post 8 above for your script is correct, the reason it doesn't do anything is because you left the ( / ) forward slash off at the beginning. Should be: /usr/bin/mate-search-tool
Using the 'Browse' button on the launcher should eliminate the above problem. It should be executable without doing anything but you could check that.

I went through the same process discussed above by hydrurga on Mint Mate 17.1 and had no problem creating the launcher on the Desktop or changing the icon.

I agree with all the above about giving full information, but that aside, you may just need to restart the desktop application, to get it to refesh the icons.

The scripts runs without the /.

No.

It is no longer impt that I be able to change the icon.

Thanks for all the help. :-)

xyproblem? (change icon vs. make usr/... work like /usr/...)

I picked up on #25: unless you're 'in' / and pwd reports just a /
then usr/...pgm won't work. Here's a script to demonstrate that:
Here, I left the leading / off of bin/id(pgm), like usr/....
You get nothing, but the error goes into the /tmp ###file
(maybe GUI 'magically' discards what you'll find in that tmpfile)
Your prompt '[sudo] password for user: ' must be going 'somewhere'!
(along with: sudo: usr/bin/mate-search-tool: command not found
So, maybe try appending to your script at the bottom of #8:
2>/tmp/`date +%N`
and look in /tmp/######### for: sudo: usr/bin/mate-search-tool: command not found

======= above edited IN; below is my orig mess: SKIP it!! ========
I don't use GUI, but have a general debug idea on "does nothing" fwiw (maybe 0 )
(tho probably not related, I've head of cron things needing -full- path)
(also, usr/bin/name [no leading /] would wrongly look *in your current dir* for usr...!)

Make a similar little new test script, which 'logs' PATH into a /tmp/<nanoseconds> file:
(the BACKticks execute dateNanosecs and use it as tmp filename!)
Run it like your 'problem' script (and try icon stuff on it...again, I don't know/do GUI)
ls /tmp looking for a filename like 987612345 (name is 9digits!) and cat it out.
(you can examine the pieces of my script line: echo $PATH; date +%N)
(and/or copy/paste/typein that line manually, to become familiar with what it does)

I also tried: and correctly got: uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root),...
(in /tmp/012345678 file)

One more [better!] idea: when I tried [wrongly] removing the leading / on bin/id
I did get the command_not_found msg, but the resulting /tmp file was empty [as expected]. GUI might do something 'special' with error msgs; to 'catch' any errors, you could append to command: 2>&1

I assume: which mate-search-tool reports /usr/bin, and your&this script is rwxr-xr-x permissions

Best wishes always... Bye. (&SorryInAdvance: my writing ability is horrible!)

I do not really understand how your scripts can help me ?

Yes, SorryInAdvance, as I said.
I'm like a 1960s DIALphone repairperson,
trying to help with a touchscreen GUIphone

I prepended a better explanation to the above.

I was trying to say: since GUI seems to discard stderr in sudo -S
a possible: sudo: usr/bin/mate-search-tool: command not found
might 'disappear' too, as does the: [sudo] password for userxxxxx:


It's always ok to skip any of my ramblings

p.s. my cellphone has a physical keyboard, no GUItouchscreen, because I can't get GUI to work

p.p.s Could anyone toss me a tech link, that explains how/?
the GUI stuff here, ?discards? stderr [?] ThanksInAdvance.
~/.xsession-errors? journald? [mate?]