Mouse hover on a group icon

[thom_A]

Hi. Thanks for allowing me to post in your respectable forums.

My Linux Mint is finally up and running after several, frustrating hurdles along the way, mostly because I'm new and had to find my way into alien territory. I'm a long time Windows user and this version of Mint I'm using (Cinnamon) feels like Windows, although not quite.

My question is, is there any way to add a link to the desktop from among the applications iist in the Menu? And when you hover on that link/icon the items that are in it appears (maybe vertically or horizontally) and can be clicked and launched just like in the menu? Or is there any way to customize this? Which will create a one-click way of accessing programs.

This is something that even Windows doesn't have, and I haven't seen it in other distros. if Mint devs can deliver this I think it would be a powerful feature in accessing applications in a very organized manner.

Thanks.

[thom_A]

I'm still familiarizing myself with the Cinnamon interface. It's got many similarites with Windows. I find that the Applets are the closest ones that I was looking for, except that what's inside them are system utilities.

What I usually do in Windows is, after everything is installed, utilites, graphics and office programs, I put each icon in 3 separate new folders with their category name.

Yes, it's easy to just leave individual icons scattered all over the desktop, but after a while it's looking messy and becoming harder to pick from among a group of scattered items. Besides, all those icons on the destop will disappear once you open windows.

The downside of grouping them into folders is you have to open the folder, pick the needed icon, then close, which is 3 clicks.

Is there a way to convert folders into Applets? I don't mean make them exactly as the one below, but it would be nice to have something like this with an option of mouse hover.

[thom_A]

I might as well use this thread to post my general impressions of Linux Mint. (I've installed/uninstalled Linux distros in the past several years.)

At first I didn't know there were three more flavors, KDE, Xfce and Mate, after having installed Cinnamon first. And so I added them all into a multi-boot Windows 7 system, which would be very difficult for a total newbie.

I could see that Xfce looks and feels lighter and trying to be Windows XP, which millions, that includes me, have/had a hard time giving up. And I like Xfce, but it lacks some features that Cinnamon and the others have.

Kubuntu KDE is the one I kept my eye on through the years. Though it's more mature and have lots of customizing features, I now see it as more complicated and requires more clicks. The multiple tabs are unnecessary and I don't need all those customizing features. What I want is simplicity.

I'm still trying to figure out Mate. It's like having 2 colums of favorites and have to switch back and forth with the Applications column.

And so I'm sticking with Cinnamon. It's got all the accessories and necessities I'm looking for like the magnifier and brightness applets, for instance. I could see that this is the devs' baby. It's the one that would attract millions of Windows users.

What i would like to see eventually that I haven't seen in any OS, including commercial ones. is the ability to see contents in a group folder by right-clicking and able to launch applications inside, in addition to the defaults in the menu, instead of opening the folder first. And with the option of mouse hover. Such simple feature, to me, is a very powerful way of organizing and quickly accessing your files. Of course you can already do this in the Menu editor, but most people want them on the desktop.

PS: Out of the four flavors, I'd hope to see massive developments on Cinnamon and Xfce.