Anonymous
Other than ROX and spaceFM, the only other “icon manager” I’ve known is one named “idesk”.
Just checked, debian stretch repository still has an idesk package.
idesk is oldschool, it is NOT xdg-compliant or xdg-aware. It doesn’t deal with “.desktop” files. Instead, you manually create a “.Lnk” file for each icon object.
Long while since I touched idesk, but this usage guide from archwiki seems accurate/familiar http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Idesk
(if you install debian package, IIRC there’s no idesk manpage, so look for a README file installed by the package)