xfce menu not showing all apps

[BillieJean]

hello. i'd really like to switch back from kde to xfce, but one things that irritates me the most about it is that there are many programs that i have to launch through "run application" dialog because xfce menu doesn't list them. and it's obviously a problem with the menu, because kde menu shows much more apps.

so is there an alternative to xfce menu, or is there simply a way to make apps show up in xfce menu?

[Runn3r.cze]

i don't use xfce, but for example in kde you can configure the menu, add or remove apps from there. try to find this also in xfce. i believe there is something for doing this

[oz]

Look in your /usr/share/applications at the .desktop files that are present.

I'm betting that you don't have a proper .desktop file there for each of the apps that don't show up in your menu. If you create or edit the .desktop files, I'm pretty sure they'll show up in your Xfce menu.

You'll have to have root permissions to work on files in that directory.

[BillieJean]

yes i know about the .desktop files, but i'm really not into messing around with them. I just thought that there may be another way of doing it... So if xfce menu reads from those .desktop files, where does K menu get entries from?

[newd to linux]

It's very easy to add items to the menu in XFCE. Just right click on the menu icon in your panel, select 'edit menu' and add the applications where you want them. It can be a bit tedious if you have many applications to add to the menu, but is still a lot easier than manually launching applications from an xterm or using the 'run application' dialog.

On a related note, I've used both KDE and Gnome, and neither of them appear to automagically place every application in the menu either.