DeviceGuru

Call me old fashioned, but one complaint I have about Kubuntu 8.04 — aka Hardy Heron — is the lack of a traditional desktop trash icon on its KDE desktop. Fortunately, this is easy to fix!

Hardy’s default Trash bin is a tiny icon in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, all the way to the right edge of the KDE taskbar. It looks like this:

Hardy’s default taskbar Trash icon
(Click image to see complete default desktop)

That location just doesn’t do it for me, so I always delete it (right-click > remove from panel > applet > trash) and substitute a normal Trash icon on the KDE desktop. Here’s the procedure…

Open up your favorite editor (kedit, etc.) and enter the following text exactly as shown:

[Desktop Entry]
Comment=Contains removed files
EmptyIcon=trashcan_empty
Encoding=UTF-8
Icon=trashcan_full
Name=Trash
Name[en_US]=Trash
Type=Link
URL[$e]=trash:/

…then save the file on your Desktop (i.e. in /home/your_user_name/Desktop/) with the name “Trash.”

The result (on a default Hardy desktop) should look like this:

Hardy with a traditional Trash icon on its desktop
(Click image to enlarge)

Enjoy!