add shortcuts/aliases to the desktop in Puppy 5.6.0?

[jhecht]

Hi all - I just made a nice dual-booter for a friend - Win XP was the original OS. I shrank the NTFS partition, made an ext 2 partition, and installed Puppy on it. Then I installed Skype and Team Viewer, both of which seem to be working nicely.

Here's where I must admit my newbie-ness. I want to put shortcuts for Team Viewer and Skype on the desktop. I've tried 2-3 of the suggested methods described online with no joy. I assume they were for earlier versions of Puppy.

I also want to remove some of the icons from the desktop >without< removing the programs. I'm sure both these actions are sh!t simple if you know how - but I don't, yet. Help please? Thanks!

[MochiMoppel]

Please make sure to post in the right forum. The HOWTO forum is for solutions, not for basic questions.
If "2-3 of the suggested methods" didn't work for you, it would be helpful to know what you tried, otherwise you might get the same suggestions again and eventually waste everybody's time.
As for your questions: see Puppy Linux - Adding and Changing Desktop Icons

[Puppus Dogfellow]

right click and select remove item to rid your desktop of it.

find where the items you want to add are located (usually in usr/share/applications) and drag them to the desktop. right click and select edit item to change or remove the name. right click > file["name"] > change icon to bring up a box in which you can drag the image file of your choice to replace the stock icon.
mt paint works well to scale or change the size after the fact. (you may find you have to save it twice to get the change to show).

on some puppies, the desktop ends up getting rebuilt after reboot, so you may need to run something like desktop restore to prevent that. (it has a back up function).


here's the desktop restore thread: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 55&t=64464


hth

[davids45]

G'day John,

I remove unwanted pinboard/desktop icons (those that start programs when left-clicked) with a right-click on the icon to bring up a menu box that includes '- Remove item(s)'.
Left click on this option and the icon is removed, but not the program.

To add an icon to the pinboard/desktop, you need to find:
its executable file (in /usr/bin, possibly), or
its xxxx.desktop file (these are mostly in /usr/share/applications, but not always). If there is a Menu list for the program you want to add to the Desktop, then there should be a .desktop file somewhere (e.g. skype.desktop).

From Rox, drag & drop either of these files to the desktop. Left-click to see if it opens. You can edit the text beneath this icon or change the icon image using the right-click menu.

If you cannot find either of these files, and if you installed the program as a .pet, look in /root/.packages for the pet's file list to see where the bits and pieces of the package have been saved to and see if you can pick the executable's location. Go there with Rox and do the drag - if it works, .
If at first you don't succeed, try another file from the package.

Is your Puppy is a Frugal install and are the Teamviewer and Skype sfs files loaded at booting?

Are these two programs linux or Windows (=wine) versions? To find the .exe file to drag to the desktop, if these are running under wine, go hunting in /root/.wine/...... (hidden directory) with Rox.

David S.

[jhecht]

Please make sure to post in the right forum. The HOWTO forum is for solutions, not for basic questions.

What forum do you think would be better? My rationalization for posting to the HOWTO forum, is that correct answers - like yours - will show folks 'how to' do the desired operation. That's a solution.

If "2-3 of the suggested methods" didn't work for you, it would be helpful to know what you tried, otherwise you might get the same suggestions again and eventually waste everybody's time.

You're right, I apologize for not being more specific, and will try to retrace my search, and post the results. They were older posts than your (correct) answer, around 2009.

As for your questions: see Puppy Linux - Adding and Changing Desktop Icons

Perfect Mochi! You are a true Puppy-meister!

The problem is that although adding/changing/removing desktop icons is a basic function, at least adding an icon is more complex in Puppy than in Win or Mac. It's not rocket science, but it can hardly be called intuitive.

Removing an icon on the desktop is simple (right click, and select 'Delete Item'), but given that dragging a desktop icon to the trash >also deletes< the original program, a bit of paranoia is understandable. A better prompt would be 'Delete Icon' don't you think? Could this idea be forwarded to the devs? How can that be done?

[MochiMoppel]

My rationalization for posting to the HOWTO forum, is that correct answers - like yours - will show folks 'how to' do the desired operation. That's a solution.

You are not the first one to be confused by the forum title. It's meant to be HOWTO! rather than HOWTO? You'll get the idea when you read some of the threads. Anyway the forum admin will quickly move your post into the right forum.

adding an icon is more complex in Puppy than in Win or Mac. It's not rocket science, but it can hardly be called intuitive.

I find it pretty similar. Dragging a file onto the desktop is what I do in Windows. Windows is even more confusing as you can either create a shortcut or actually copy a file to the desktop. In Puppy the desktop is not a folder, so you always will create shortcuts.

A better prompt would be 'Delete Icon' don't you think? Could this idea be forwarded to the devs? How can that be done?

Hmm... since the dialog offers to change the shortcut icon ("Set Icon..."), "delete icon" could be misinterpreted as deleting the custom icon. Maybe "Remove Shortcut" would be better, but frankly I don't care and I'm sure you will get used to it quickly. If not, you can always change and recompile the ROX source code.

[jhecht]

You are not the first one to be confused by the forum title. It's meant to be HOWTO! rather than HOWTO? You'll get the idea when you read some of the threads. Anyway the forum admin will quickly move your post into the right forum.

I'm glad the admin will move my post. However, the question remains - what >is< the right forum? It's useful if you tell me I did something wrong. It's >more< useful - to me and others - if you tell me how to do it right.

adding an icon is more complex in Puppy than in Win or Mac. It's not rocket science, but it can hardly be called intuitive.

I find it pretty similar. Dragging a file onto the desktop is what I do in Windows. Windows is even more confusing as you can either create a shortcut or actually copy a file to the desktop. In Puppy the desktop is not a folder, so you always will create shortcuts.

In Windows, I select the file(s) or folder(s) or >program(s)<, and choose 'copy' - then I switch focus to the desktop, and choose 'paste shortcut'. That's many fewer steps than what Puppy wants me to do for programs. The drag-to-desktop procedure you describe works perfectly - for files and folders. But to make a program shortcut you have to use the longer procedure you described earlier. Is that not correct?

A better prompt would be 'Delete Icon' don't you think? Could this idea be forwarded to the devs? How can that be done?

Hmm... since the dialog offers to change the shortcut icon ("Set Icon..."), "delete icon" could be misinterpreted as deleting the custom icon. Maybe "Remove Shortcut" would be better, but frankly I don't care and I'm sure you will get used to it quickly. If not, you can always change and recompile the ROX source code.

I like "Remove Shortcut". How can we pass the suggestion on? Whether you as an expert Puppy user care or not, clear dialogs help other users. Isn't that part of the Open Source code vibe, to help others? If I knew enough to recompile the ROX source code - and had the time to do it, we wouldn't be having this discussion (grin). That comment is not helpful to anyone...