Im using xfce here and its very nice, but I miss what I have in gnome, kde .... the desktop with icons and stuff... If I run nautilus under xfce its looses the original xfce right key ... and I just want my desktop with icons but dont want to loose xfce functionality


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you could try idesk, not sure about the rightclick menu though...

idesk nor fbdeskt gives me the freedon of using the right button ... :/


I realy dont understand why xfce doesnt have a full desktop ...

I'm not sure what you mean by "full". A desktop icon is nothing more than a launcher, when can be just as easily accessed via the panel or right-click menu. It is actually a rather hokey way to go about your business. I don't see any loss of functionality. I have set up idesk before in fluxbox and not seen any change in the appearance of the native menu. I don't know why or how this would change with an Xfce desktop environment.

usually when i want a full featured desktop environment i just use KDE, and when i want to cut back on features for an anternative light wm i just use an older version of xfce (4.06) or fvwm, and like Xian says when going for a light wm such as xfce it has an easily accessable panel that can be customized with the icons & applications of your choice making desktop icons redundant...

Linux is all about freedom though, you are free to configure your system as you see fit and i only offer advise & suggestions - do whatever you think is best...

What do u mean with right click menu?

There is an idesk config program which adds a right click menu to idesk icons to add new icons and configure the icons.

I totaly disagree... if its so simple why not come with this feature? Like gnome or kde why not implemnt on xfce? Maybe you have already sited and never bother about this feature loss but I realy think its a bad dont have the simple desktop icons... I think they are nice and give a big hand in the wheel when you want to drag and drop things...

by the other side Im asking for an alternative or for some pluggin to give me that feature, I know that kde, gnome have it but Im using xfce and im realy liking... and im not using it to have more power to spent after all Im running on a P4 2.8 ghz box so thats not realy the problem...

I think that the contextual menu of the right buttom is very complete in xfce and Im not in the mod to change it for the all missing menu of idesk, to be honest I think idesk prety full of useless things and missing usefull things...

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I've never tried it, but Rox is supposed to give you the added functionality you are looking for.

If you want the functionality of Gnome or KDE, why not use them. Part of what appeals to people about XFCE and some of the other alternatives is the low overhead. That overhead is as a result of fewer features. So there are trade offs.

In reality though most people are running on 2.6ghz+ pcs. On those pcs, the software is by no means a bottleneck(X11 is the bottleneck actually in these cases). Fluxbox will not outperform Gnome, even with the most hopeful imagination, on a pc like that. Starting firefox will take around 2 seconds in Gnome, and around 2 seconds in fluxbox. The only difference is in Gnome i can start firefox with one click. That's faster than having to right click and then pick firefox on the fluxbox menu. It's even faster than a hotkey.(single click on a panel is much faster than pressing ctrl+alt+f for firefox)

Less memory usage? Yes, but unless you USE that memory it won't matter.(if you aren't a video/photo editor you don't need that memory and even then linux knows when and what to swap.)

Even on my pentium 3 XFCE does not outperform gnome at all. It just provides fewer features and less integration.

Just a small rant, take what i have to say with a grain of salt.

When i moved from ubuntu to zenwalk (slack based) i noticed a big difference in speed between gnome and xfce. OOo takes next to no time to load on zen but in ubuntu it would take forever. That and to add to the desktop icons thing, i also find the panel to be more then enough, it gives me a nice place to put launchers, graphical pager, volume control, time and date, system load bars etc. That and i find my desktop is always covered in windows not exactly a place for icons now is it

Yeah, panels are much easier than icons anyway. If XFCE had something similar to the Applications, Places, and Desktop menus i would consider using it. They are just organized.

Also though, I find gnome apps to be much higher quality than other apps.(totem>xine and mplayer, Rhythmbox>amarok, Epiphany>konqueror, gnome-terminal is the best xterm in existence as to support for non-western fontsets.)

Gnome may not look as "1337" as fluxbox, but it is faster and easier to get work done

The speed diference you noticed may have been due to Ubuntu vs. Slackware, not so much a Gnome vs. XFCE.

hmm actually you are probably right. Xfce in ubuntu was weird at the best of times, taking a massive 110mb on boot when zenwalk starts on 43MB.

well, is a matter of opnion, I like to have desktop icons, im not saying that I have 3 thousand icons on my desktop... but I like to have some nice folder there, I know about all the advantages of the pannel, I use it, more precisily I use 2.... they have many goodies, icons, alias and etc... but the point you are not seeing is that Im not saying "xfce or gnome?", Im asking if anyone knows an alternative for the desktop icons, realy, I know all the things behind gnome, kde, Im using xfce to give a time of kde because I like to have different experiences... Is not that Im going to die because I dont have desktop icons, but I realy wanted to know if anyone knew about some app that like I said was able to give me the icons and leave the native contextual menu in peace.
Strange like this gone from "anybody knows an better idesk" to "why xfce boots with less overload in zen then ubuntu?" LOL
;D

But dont botter, this thread became even better hehehe


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ps: As an conclusion, I will keep using xfce without desktop icons

As interndan mentioned, you can try using Rox for having desktop icons. Actually I have XFCE 4.4 (SVN version, still under development) installed and minimized windows appear as icons on the desktop (this feature is enabled under the "useless bloat" tab of the desktop settings ). Of course this is not quite what you want. When I switched to XFCE I wondered how I'd do without icons but I found panel launchers to be at least as practical (This way I don't have to minimize windows to uncover the desktop icons). Nowadays I'm using fluxbox also, and this keygrabber thing is really great... So, if you want to use xfce, I'd recommend giving xfce+rox a try.