Adding Desktop Icons to Plasma

Plasma is an excellent Desktop Environment, but recent versions have removed the traditional Home, Trash, Network, and Computer icons from the system. This tutorial will help you restore them.

Why did they go away?

I am not sure, it may have to do with the experiments with their new folder view for the desktop, which is totally cool, but sometimes we just want to use the desktop folder and work on that. That is my preferred way to go: Whatever is being worked on presently is on the desktop. Once it is moved off done, I file it away into documents where it needs to go, so I still want to use the Desktop Folder and have the links to the home folder, network, and trash. So here we will walk through how to get them back.

Configure the Desktop

The first step is to right click on the desktop and select Configure Desktop. Make sure you are set to Folder View, and the default Desktop Folder is what is being displayed. The default, top radio button is the Desktop Folder.

Setup the Icons

Now it is time to setup the icons, so open Dolphin or any other file manager and navigate to /home/Desktop. In this folder, you will want to create a desktop application for each of the links you want. If you do not want Network, just leave that one out of your list. Let's assume you want them all, so here are the four files you will create:

home.desktop
computer.desktop
network.desktop
trash.desktop

Once these files are completed, open them up and place the appropriate code:

Home

[Desktop Entry]
URL[$e]=$HOME
GenericName=Home Folder
Icon=user-home
Name[en_US]=Home
Name=Home
Type=Link

Computer

[Desktop Entry]
Name=My Computer
Comment=All system files
Icon=computer
Type=Link
URL=/
OnlyShowIn=KDE

Network

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Network
Comment=Network shares
Icon=preferences-system-network-server-ftp
Type=Link
URL=remote:/
OnlyShowIn=KDE

Trash

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Trash
Comment=Contains removed files
Icon=user-trash-full
EmptyIcon=user-trash
Type=Link
URL=trash:/
OnlyShowIn=KDE

Once these codes are placed into their respective files, save up the files and you should have your desktop icons. You can change the icons by right clicking, accessing the properties, and clicking on the icon. You can also manually update the icon in the .desktop file.