I thought this would be answered in the forum already, but I couldn't find it in a search.

I want to add an application to my "Hat" (Foot) menu. On my Mandrake 8.2 box at work, there is a program called "menudrake" that allows me to configure the menu with a GUI. What is the equivalent for Red Hat 9? Even better would be the config file that I could manually edit!

according to redhat linux 9 bible:

TIP: to add an item to the rehat menu, you must add a .desktop file in the /usr/share/applications dir. easiest way to do this is to copy an existing .desktop file and modifty it.
example...

(as root)
# cd /usr/share/applications
#cp gnome-cd.desktop <application name>.desktop

next use any text editor to change the contents of the <app name>.desktop file by adding a comment, file to execute, icon to display and application name. after you save changes, the new item will immediately appear on the menu.

lol, great book, now a newb like me can give help!

That worked perfectly. If others want to modify submenus under the "Hat" menu, the files to edit and add to are in .

A newbie who will RTFM is more helpful than many gurus!

Are you using KDE or GNOME, if it is GNOME I'm not sure but for KDE you right click on the Red Hat and then select Menu Editor you can try this on GNOME and see if it works, sorry I can't help more but I prefer KDE over GNOME and never installed GNOME.

As I hinted above, I'm using GNOME.

This all came about because I decided to try out Ximian's Red Carpet to update my copy of Evolution (1.2 -> 1.4) as well as OpenOffice.org (Red Hat 9 default [1.0.3?] -> 1.1ximian).

This update changed my menu settings all over the place. After I rebooted, it had set up OpenOffice menu items that it had deleted. This is what I was originally trying to fix. Now I don't have _any_ Preferences menu. Maybe Red Carpet is not for people who don't want Ximian Desktop. I would have used something else if I had known that it would change unrelated menu settings.

I would be very grateful if someone would make a tarball of the default Red Hat menu setting files. You can put it on the web or email it to me and I will put it on my web page. (Send it to kayhan AT hotpop.com)

Best,
kg

< Edited to fix grammar >