Hello friends. I am new to xubuntu and I have a (silly?) question. I used Synaptic and apt-get from the console to install several programs (squid, samba, mldonkey-server, mldonkey-gui etc). The problem is that I can't run them. OK I know I have to tweek the conf to make squid work, but where are there all the other programs that come with a gui? And how on earth can add a shortcut to these and include them in a xfce category?
Any help would be really appreciated.
Nick

Hey there!

I'm not an expert on this and I'm actually running ubuntu/Gnome,

But I create shortcuts by right-clicking on the file and choose 'Make Link'
Also, in my case I can not do that to any files that are not owned by me.

Sometimes, after I install an app, it will not show up until I do a 'killall gnome-panel' at the terminal. I do a lot of installing from the terminal. Lets, see I think Xubuntu is KDE correct?

I'm not sure what you would enter at the terminal to refresh your desktop, but once you do, I'm guessing that your apps will show up.

I use Xubuntu and the xfce desktop is still being developed. It is also a lightweight desktop, so you should keep that in mind when trying to personalize it.

Now, to add links, right click on your menu bar and select "Add New Item." In the dialog box, select Launcher, and then a new box comes up. In the Name and Description, type in your preference. In the Icon line, you can browse for an icon appropriate for your application, and most are found in /usr/share/pixmaps I think. In the Command box, you can actually just type in the command for the app you're adding if it's in your PATH variable. You can also browse for it by clicking on the folder button next to the box.

Unfortunately, I can't see any way to edit the main XFCE menu, so you may not be able to add any items into, say, your Office group.

XFCE4 is much nicer than version 3 and it keep getting better, although I'm worried that if it gets too fancy, it may start having the same problems as KDE and GNOME in the "bloated" category.

if you are talking about xfce4 "desktop menu" and if i'm not wrong , theres xfce gui tool for this menu configurations , its in Desktop Menu --> Settings --> Menu Editor

if you prefer manual configurations(which is faster a bit) , you can search for "menu.xml"(at least on my system) ... the locations might be /etc/xfce4 , ~/.xfce4 or ~/.config/xfce4/desktop depending on your xfce4 configuration ...


and yes ... i also dont feel xfce is a light weight wm in any sense although they are somewhat lighter than gnome/kde ...


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The thing with the menu editor is, it won't let you add to anything in the "System" section. There's a way to do this (for sweetnsourbkr and anyone else who wants to know), have a look at this thread on the Xfce forum.

As for creating desktop shortcuts in Xfce, you can't if you're using Xfce as it is. I think you can use something called Rox to get desktop icons and I heard (I think!) that icons will be available in a future release of Xfce.

There are not always GUIs for server applications.
Here are some for Samba. If you like some of those, look in Synaptic first, whether it's in the repos.

If you want to browse shares on other machines using Samba, Xfce has an application for this and it's called Xfsamba.

Thanks Nylex! I was wondering how to get around that limitation ...

if you want , you can have a look at directories ~/.config/menus and ~/.local/share/applications ... and if you create new "catagories" , there suppose be a directory of "~/.local/share/desktop-directories" ...

not sure whether this works with your xfce4 but it works on my gnome ...

btw ... just noticed an "Alacarte Menu Editor" in gnome's "Applications" menu ...


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