I am running Debian Testing and XFCE. I have three panels that I use. A couple of days ago, the launchers on panel 1 started flashing every-so-often. I noticed that only the launcher icons on panel one were flashing. The panel stayed the same length (see image). So I put a launcher on panel 3 and noticed that is also flashes now.

I timed these flashes and they seem to happen every 10 minutes, exactly.

It's kind of hard to see, but the top image is how my panel looks normally. When the icons flash, you can see the panel stays the same length. Same thing happens on panel 3 when I added the launcher.


Anyone know what might be causing this and how to fix it? It's kind of annoying.

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You might have 2 (or more) panels concurrently configured at the same location.

I've learned to keep notes on how my desktop is set up so I can restore it manually from "factory default". But if you have the situation I'm suggesting as possible, just delete the panels and create a new one and put the widgets back by configuring it again. It may be as simple as deleting just the empty one that sometimes blocks over the full one.

No such luck. I deleted the panels that I could, then removed all the launchers from panel 1. In the panel preferences, it showed only one panel. I then created new launchers and the same symptoms came back. This only happens on the launchers. If I have anything else on the panel, like the quicklauncher, a menu or a clock, those items do not flash.

The same problem is reproduced on my machine with Alt Linux.

I'm not seeing this effect on my Slackware 13.37 and Slackware64 13.37 based desktops running Xfce 4.6.2, Linux 2.6.38.4 (from Slackware testing directory), with the nouveau driver (not the nvidia driver) on an Nvidia 6150 SE chipset (a cheap low end one for cheap machines that cost less total than a decent video card).

Exactly 10 minutes? Is there a power management option or screensaver that tries to trigger at that time?


I don't have an issue with my quick launcher icons unless I change the default icon set. Then they are invisible until I log out and then back in. Earlier when Xfce 4.8 was in beta, I noticed more issues with the launcher icons. Back then, disabling desktop compositing remedied it for me. But that might be an undesirable option depending on your tastes.

I thought about that, but I don't use screensavers and I only use power management on my laptop when using a battery. I had xscreensaver disabled. But I thought I would check and for some reason Gnome's screen saver daemon was running. I shut that down and the icons still flash. This is really baffling me as to why this is happening. It never used to happen, it only started a couple of weeks ago. Probably some Debian update caused this, but I can't figure which one.

I have since stopped using the launchers and only use the quick launcher. I prefer the launcher over the quick launcher but it is acceptable. But if I can get my old launchers to stop flashing, I'd use them again.