Adding icons on XFCE desktop

[Gavin Chester]

On Sat, 2005-04-30 at 01:31 -0700, Sami Samhuri wrote:
> * On Sat Apr-30-2005 at 12:13:59 PM +0800, narendras at compucomtech.co.in said:
> [...]
> > Now i want to add icons on desktop , i tried a lot but all in vain .
> > So please any suggestion in this regard .
> > thanx in advance
> 
> This is not possible with xfdesktop in Xfce 4.2. It is planned for Xfce
> 4.4 which has no release date set right now. It is said that it will be
> released when it is ready (a good time IMO).
> 
> You are free to use any other desktop in place of xfdesktop. Rox seems
> to be popular with Xfce users; however, many desktops provide desktop
> icons. Simply run 'killall xfdesktop' and then run the desktop of your
> choice. If you use a session manager then your choice should persist
> through future logins. Otherwise you should edit your .xinitrc
> accordingly.
> 
> Hope this helps,
> 

No, I don't think that's a very helpful or friendly answer.  You are
basically saying like or lump it - and go away and don't bother me :-(

I came from being a KDE devotee and have quickly adapted to Xfce because
I have an older 450MHz workstation.  I'm sold on Xfce now because it has
given me back system responsiveness, like it promised, compared with the
bloated KDE.

Part of that adaption to Xfce is that I grew used to not having desktop
icons.  You might too if you retrain yourself to use the menu and/or add
all your favourite icons to the Xfce panel instead.  

If you are still finding it hard without desktop icons, and can't wait
for the promise of them in 4.4, then you might want to look at iDesk
that solves just this sort of problem:

http://idesk.sourceforge.net/

and a screen shot of icons on an Xfce desktop:

http://idesk.sourceforge.net/screenshots/0.7/screen_xfce1.jpg

Haven't used it myself, because I weaned myself off the icons, but it
looks promising

Regards, Gavin