Cannot add desktop shortcuts for KDE

Question

My Chromebook used to have Unity installed, but recently it wouldn't boot and I had to use a recovery image to boot it back up. My Ubuntu install had been wiped clean out of the system, so I reinstalled it and decided to use KDE instead of Unity. I used to have desktop shortcuts to launch software, but now there's no /home/[your username here]/Desktop directory for me to put the shortcuts in.

What I'm basically trying to ask here is: How can I add software icons to the desktop screen so I can quickly launch applications on KDE?

Solution

You expect a traditional desktop but as far as I loosly followed KDE since 4.x is no such thing, they even considered desktop icons to be obsolete in the first 4.x releases.

As Plasma Desktop treats the user interface differently than a traditional desktop, there may be confusion as to what the Plasma Desktop is, what it does, and how to perform common tasks.

https://userbase.kde.org/Plasma/HowTo/4.5

There are at least two ways depending on the widget you use to display icons. Here are the animations that explain how it's done and what the results look like, there is no text version apparently.

Comments

[Admin]

Possible duplicate of Quickly launch any app in KDE with a shortcut

[giikae]

@CelticWarrior This is not a duplicate. That question relates to launching applications with a keyboard shortcut, and my question relates to adding an icon (shortcut) to the desktop screen, like a Windows or Mac desktop would.

[Elder Geek]

Clear as a bell!