The way in which GNOME implements menus in the desktop enables you to do the following:
Customize the menu hierarchy easily. The menu hierarchy is not based on the file system hierarchy. You can edit a small number of files to customize the menu hierarchy. You do not need to modify your applications or move files.
Install applications easily. You do not need to provide information about the menu hierarchy to applications when you install the applications.
Configure menus so that users cannot modify the menus.
Menus in the GNOME desktop use the following components:
File abstraction layer
Vfolders
Desktop entry files
Directory entry files