Created attachment 3525 Patch that you will probably reject This patch really does two things but it's hard to separate them because both use the preferences dialog. One is to disable the trash. Now I know you have heard this a hundred times and don't want to implement it as described in http://wiki.xfce.org/nl/faq#can_i_disable_the_trash but I think it is more important now that trash requires gvfs. For someone like me who doesn't have any other reason to install gvfs, trash is just a nuisance. And trust me... I don't let careless users near my computer. The other thing it does (which might go over just as badly) is give users the option of showing the real name of a desktop file. If the directory you're looking at is "Desktop" the name is cleverly substituted just as one would expect for a desktop shortcut. But in all other directories there is none of this funny business. I don't like seeing two files "Pidgin" and "Pidgin" and not knowing which one is the desktop file and which one is the executable.
Created attachment 3758 Updated version Some users reported segfaults with the old one.
That you need gvfs for trash is a crap reason, then don't install gvfs. The patch is also leaking the preferences object and various strings. We'll (if even implemented) never advertise to disable those features, so no need to add them to the preferences dialog, hidden settings is already bad enough.
Created attachment 3771 Second update Thanks for catching the memory leaks. Yes I know that Thunar will still work without gvfs and I have been happily using it this way for some time. But now the only way to empty the trash is to mess around in /home/.Trash-0. It would be easier for me if deleted files didn't end up there in the first place.
About the desktop files, I'm also working on bug #5012 which would make .desktop files outside xdg directories without execution bit set, appear as normal files. You can still execute them, but the user is asked first what to do. Does that solve your problem? Because IMHO its not a big deal if desktop files appear as launchers in /usr/share/applications.
That would help. I also think ".desktop" should appear in the display name outside xdg dirs so there's no possibility of seeing two files in the same directory that have the same name.
If outside the xdg directory and not executable, it will indeed show the full filename (ie, not the name key from the desktop file). I'll also drop the desktop file editing (name and icon) from the general tab in the file properties and move the entire desktop file handling to the launcher tab.
The trash will be fixed like in bug #2650.