First thanks to taras on the forums for this post which outlines the process.

1. Click Launch, Control Center, Display, Panel/Taskbar, Panel

2. Expand Display, expand Panel/Taskbar and click Panel

3. Change Size to “Tiny”, click Apply and close Control Center

(You can use these pictures for any size taskbar; just rename them appropriately. If you want to use the normal sized taskbar, for example, rename the images in step four as “button_down_normal.png” and “button_up_normal.png” or “button_up_small.png” and “button_down_small.png.” Look at the other images in /usr/share/apps/kicker/pixmaps for examples.)

4. Download these two images to the Desktop (/home/user/Desktop/):
Save as button_down_tiny.png
Save as button_up_tiny.png

NOTE! They MUST have these names.

5. In the next step we need to replace the default Xandros OS Kicker Tiny Buttons, However you may wish to keep the old buttons. If so you need to run the following commands before the next step. First open up a Console/Terminal (Alt+Ctrl+t) and then execute by typing (or copying and pasting) each line separately and pressing Enter:

sudo bash 
cd /usr/share/apps/kicker/pixmaps/ 
cp button_down_tiny.png button_down_tiny.png.old 
cp button_up_tiny.png button_up_tiny.png.old 

These commands basically: Open bash as a privileged user, change directory to where the kicker launcher buttons are located and copies a copy of the old files and appends .old

6. Still in terminal, to copy the images from your desktop to the launch button image folder, type (or copy and paste):

cp /home/user/Desktop/button*.png /usr/share/apps/kicker/pixmaps

This command will take any PNG file starting with button and copy it into the kicker launcher button location.

NOTE! This will overwrite any previous files you had in this folder by the same name. If you want to keep the previous versions of the files please reread step 5 before executing this command.

7. You now need to kill and restart kicker. To do this, press Ctrl+Alt+Esc (mouse cursor changes to a skull), Next click on the taskbar. Now wait until the taskbar disappears. After this press Alt+F2 (the Run dialog appears).

8. Still in terminal type:

kicker

9. Et voila, your launch button should now be the above image. You can customize it to anything, if you're handy with icon editing and know how to do PNG transparency masking.

10. If for some strange reason you are unhappy with the new icon, you can restore the old icon with the following commands.

NOTE! You MUST have done step 5, else this will do nothing as the files will not exist.

Open Console/Terminal (Alt+Ctrl+t) and then execute by typing (or copying and pasting) each line separately and pressing Enter:

sudo bash
cd /usr/share/apps/kicker/pixmaps/ 
mv button_down_tiny.png.old button_down_tiny.png 
mv button_up_tiny.png.old button_up_tiny.png 

Have fun!

Here are some new buttons I modified:

Enjoy! -rabbitofdeath