A very minimal desktop
I discovered a really nifty trick the other day, one that makes for a pleasant work environment and that fills the need for a launch area of some kind. It basically eliminates the need for iDesk, too.
While you may be aware that Xfce can draw the usual home, trash, and volume folders directly on the desktop, it can also do things with the icons on the desktop. Like . . . use them as application launchers.
Open up a browser, and drag a .desktop entry from /usr/share/applications onto the desktop. Presto, there’s your application launcher. Much larger than the usual miniscule panel icon sizes, too. The downside is that you can’t drag items directly from your Xfce menu, but as long as you know where they come from, you can add any launcher you want. A bit of tinkering results in the following:
Who needs a panel, when the desktop launchers, right-click desktop menu, and keyboard commands work just fine? Unless you really need one, of course. It’s almost like the ever-popular spartan Openbox + iDesk combination. Xfce distilled to its finest essence. Thank goodness for flexibility.
