Even though no one else give a fuck I think this is a good idea and I'll try it when I install the latest version of Thunderbird on Ubuntu when I get round to it.
Could it be possible to distribut similar scripts to this to automatically set up icons on the desktop like Xfce, Gnome or KDE?
A software developer could just distribute thier software with a universal install script that detects what desktops are present on the system and add the appropriet icons.
This sort of thing would simplify the installation of programs for many newbs and people who want to learn can easily view the scripts, it'll be like back in the days of programs comming with batch file installation program but UNIX's scripting is far superiour.