Most windows users in my experience, don't want to spend time rifling through the menu looking for programs, that they are not familiar with. It doesn't matter how much I make my Linux box look and to a degree act like windoze, they still grumble. They just want to do what they have to do, without trying to figure out what program will do what they want. Because, I want them to have a good Linux experience, I will try to help them out.

Okay, on with it. First a word of warning. We will be working in user level directories and files. Usually if you screw up you can just delete the files and they will be replaced with stock files at the next login. But, I still back them up just for good habit.

First we need a new submenu, so we can move the stock lxde menu to it. So open a terminal and do...

gedit ./.local/share/desktop-directories/all-applications.directory


Then you can copy and paste this (a desktop directory file) into it. The name you enter after Name= and the Icon path you enter after Icon= will be the name and icon which show up in the menu. Change only those two lines to your liking, then save and close gedit.



Now we need to add this submenu to a custom menu. To do that in a terminal do...

gedit ./config/menus/lxde-applications.menu

(a word of warning, if you already have an existing lxde-applications.menu file, this will overwrite it!)Now copy and paste this (a copy of my lxde-applications.menu file) into it. It is a xml file so if you know what you are doing you can create your own. If not, I suggest you copy mine. Now save and close it.


In the next part, we just have to edit lxpanel's configuration file for the panel you want to modify. If you have more than one panel on your desktop make sure you edit the right one. Okay, so now lets navigate to ./config/lxpanel/lubuntu/panels/which-ever-panel-you-want-to-modify (make sure you have the lxde menu plugin activated on this panel) it may be titled panel, top panel or whatever. So let's open it in a text editor such as leafpad or gedit. Here is mine for example.

Now go down to just below where it says...

Plugin {
    type = menu
    Config {
        image=/home/main/usr-local/Debian3232/start-button.png
        system {
        }
        separator {
        }




Below this, is where you add your custom program entries. For say iceweasel and then a seperator, add something like this...


      item {
           image=/path/to/icon/file
           name=Explore the Internet
           action=iceweasel 
     }
     separator {
     }


 
Here is where you really modify the menu. Any text you use after name=  will show up in the menu. If you want an Icon /give/the/path/to/icon/image.png after image=  and the application's executable after action=  for the program you want it to run (you can find most of these in /usr/share/applications, use a text editor to open the .desktop files and copy what's after exec=  ).