How to customize applications menu?

I like openSuSE, but the main thing I miss from Ubuntu is the ability to have complete control over the applications menu. Ubuntu had a clean menu where everything was one level deep, with pretty basic categories. But opening alacarte in openSuSE (running 11.2 with GNOME) is an absolute mess. There are categories for “Astronomy”, “Kidsgames”, and a whole bunch of folders that I would never use. And it’s nearly impossible to get rid of them. Selecting delete almost never works; the closest I’ve gotten was to re-name a whole bunch of “.directory” files so that the system wouldn’t find them, but it still created the majority of them, only this time with generic folders over the default icons.

Plus, I would like to be able to change which application goes to which category in the Application Browser. That menu is much more clean, but I would like to create a “Games” section for it, and move my text editors from Utility to Development.

I know that most of the .desktop files are in /usr/share/applications (I have a couple in /usr/local/share), the directories are defined in /usr/share/desktop-directories and ~/.local/share/desktop-directories, and the menu itself seems to define categories in /etc/xdg/menus/applications.menu. But despite knowing all of this, I still have no idea how to clean up alacarte and how to move around launchers in the Application Browser.

Can anyone help me?

Just tried some of these things in Gnome. I can drag and drop from one menu to another, remove items from the menu, no problem. Did you try dragging and dropping? The submenu’s open nicely when you’re hanging above the parent menu.
AFAIK the Categories are not openSUSE’s or Ubuntu’s, but Gnome’s and KDE’s. I guess it’s some Ubuntu customization.

Hi, if you want a more Ubuntu style you know, a good thing is to add the ‘Custom Menu Bar’ from the add-to-panel section.
I have again two panels like i had in ubuntu, since i just love it that way.

But i am not sure how to costumize it. :frowning:

Alacarte was much more usable in Ubuntu, so I doubt this is a GNOME thing. Ubuntu had far fewer, and more useful, categories, and I’m fairly certain the Application Browser is SuSE-specific since its default application menu is unique, and its categorization isn’t the same as the one used in alacarte.

Thanks for the point about dragging-and-dropping, as which category a launcher is listed under in alacarte does seem to directly relate to where it appears in the Application Browser; but now, how do I clean up alacarte? Is it possible?

Hi
The openSUSE Desktop menu is defined by
menu-spec and
http://en.opensuse.org/SUSE_Package_Conventions/Desktop_Menu so I
wonder if it’s a debian thing? As indicated, you can use the custom
one, or use the classic rather than the slab? Just right-click on the
panel to add.

I have packaged up GnoMenu which may be of interest?
http://gtk-apps.org/content/show.php/GnoMenu+-+consolidated+menu+for+gnome?content=93056
http://packages.opensuse-community.org/index.jsp?distro=openSUSE_112&searchTerm=GnoMenu


Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
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