hi,

 i'm working on a product that needs to integrate with the users
desktop. So far its been fine to do this on windows only, but now we
need to do this on linux. We can't use commercial tools that do this
(eg InstallShield X) since we need to do this in a lightweight
executable.

1) What are the mainstream major linux desktop managers and mainstream
versions - ie those that linux users could reasonably expect to be
supported (am guessing KDE and GNOME 1.X and GNOME 2.X at least)
2) How stable are the desktop integration APIs/methods
3) For each of the mainsteam desktop managers, a brief synopsis of the
framework and how it works (eg I believe GNOME 2.0 uses XML formats)
4) For each of the mainstream desktops are there system utilities
guaranteed to be available that would ease creation of icons etc.. (ie
the plan would be to execute these rather than link to the OS
libraries)
5) For each of the mainstream desktops that don't have system
utilities that could be executed, a pointer to documentation/tutorial
on how to do this programmatically (preferably in C/C++)

The motivation for (4) is that if desktop integration would require
XML parsing code then its better someone else does that(?)

thanks,
asjf

Who is the target audience for your product?

the target audience I guess is software developers (although this may
include students and other non-hardcore-linux people)