Virtual desktops, desktop icons

["andrew.m.mc.clure.1" <amcclure purdue edu>]

Hi. I am running GNOME 2.0.8 on Solaris. I have two questions that I was
unable to determine the answer to from the user's documentation. (I tried
searching the archives of this list but got a "The requested URL
/mailman/search was not found on this server." error.)

First, how do I remove the "home" and "trash" icons from my desktop?

Second, is there any way to ensure that child windows open in the same
virtual desktop as their parent window, rather than just opening into
whatever vdesktop I happen to be using at that moment? Or alternately
"quarantine" an application in such a way that all future instances of a
specific application are forced to open into a specific virtual desktop?

Basically, I have a program which I frequently run which runs a very
long computation and then splatters a whole bunch of new windows all over
the place elaborating the results. This is a problem because while this
computation is running I find myself having to stay in the vdesktop where
the computation was initiated because otherwise the result windows will
wind up just scattered across desktops. This means by the end of the day I
generally wind up just doing everything in one vdesktop. Is there anything
I can do to confine this program so that I can safely do work in other
vdesktops while I'm waiting for it to conclude?

If the answer to either of these questions is "you can't do that in
2.0.8", would I be able to do them by upgrading or applying some kind
of extention then?

Thanks.

- Andrew McClure