QProcess Shell Command (Linux) Elevate Privileges?

[ChrisW67]

but cannot set symlinks in $HOME/Desktop/ pointing to /usr/share/icons/<icon-size>/apps directory without elevating permissions

If the user's home directory is not writeable to the user then it seems you have larger problems to deal with.

Is the point of this entire exercise to allow random user A to install the software on the system for use by all users or just themselves?

If this is meant to be a user-only install then there should be no need for elevated privileges. Install in a user-writeable area, put a *.desktop file into .local/share/applications and you should be done.

If the software is to be installed system wide then (IMHO) far and away the best packaging option is the native one for the relevant system. Then the user, who is familiar with their own system, can use the system's familiar tools to install and uninstall your software. Of course, this imposes a work load on you if you want to do this for half a dozen different packaging schemes. There's no way around requiring elevated rights to install system-wide and no way to accommodate every variation on a theme.