desktop doesn't have different icons for different file types and dbus requirement and taskbar and toolbar at same place?

[Brian J. Tarricone]

Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> Three questions below:
> 
> 1) My wife's desktop only shows one icon graphic that looks like a piece 
> of paper. This is repeated for all types of file types or folders.

Install and use a decently complete icon theme, like Tango or 
gnome-icon-theme.  In addition, you also must have hicolor-icon-theme 
installed for icon theming to work properly.

> 2) My second question is about dbus requirement. The xfdesktop uses 
> libdbus and libdbus-glib. I don't have dbus daemon running.

If you're using our default startup scripts, then yes, you do.  You're 
confusing the dbus session bus with the dbus system bus.  The systemwide 
bus is not required for these things.

Regardless, dbus support is required for file icons on the desktop.  If 
you don't care about file icons, you can recompile xfdesktop without 
dbus/thunar-vfs support.

> Is there any 
> run-time or build option to periodically check file/directory changes 
> without using DBUS?

File and directory change notification doesn't use dbus; it uses gamin 
or FAM (I'd recommend gamin).  You'll need to recompile libthunar-vfs 
(probably a part of your thunar package) after installing gamin.

> 3) Anyway to get the panel and standard menu bar at same place? I have the 
> panel at top (default I assume) and the XFCE menu at middle bottom. I want 
> to put both at top or bottom so to not waste space.

Just remove the bottom panel entirely and then add the menu item to the 
top panel.

	-brian