I recently installed the latest version of limewire onto my kde runnin' suse 7.3 platform. It works just fine when I run it from the xterm or the konsole, but when I make a desktop shortcut to the script, it pops up for a second and then instantly dies. This has happened numerous times with other apps and I've never been able to figure it out. I've tried the 'run in konsole' option and just about everything else I can think of. I think it may have to do with the current directory, because if I run from any other directory it can't find the necessary files. Help!

It sounds to me as though your problem is simply that the app you are trying to run only works within a shell. This is due to the fact that many apps do not have a GUI frontend, so the desktop managers do nto know how to draw.

There are many programs that do that. I suggest you do a search on Google for any graphical frontends to the program. If there are any, install it and see if you get the same problem.

All of these apps are built for X (Limewire for example). Their respective windows pop up just fine when ran from the xterm.

no help/similar experiences/useless advice?

c'mon

Have you tried to search forums for LimeWire? This issue was address a least a couple of times.
The solution is to write a script:

#!/bin/bash
cd /dir/where/limewire/is
sh runLime.sh # or whatever the exec name is

Then chmod 755 this little thing.
PLace it in directory where your PATH would see it, I prefer to use /home/username/bin dir for users execs
and than create a shortcut the usual way pointing to the script you created

great!!!! Thanks.