XFCE screen remains empty; right mouse button does nothing

jjge · 10-17-2015, 05:22 AM

Hello, *

All of a sudden my XFCE screen remains empty; and since the right mouse button has no effect, I cannot put any new items on it.
Looking at the file Desktop, all items that were there are still available. They just don't show up.

The bar at the bottom of the screen is still there, and it works.

What can I do to get my filled screen back?

jjge · 10-17-2015, 05:25 AM

Addition: rebooting does not help; the situation seems to be permanent.

TobiSGD · 10-17-2015, 06:39 AM

This may happen when xfwm4 is not starting. Try to open a terminal and run xfwm4 manually.

ondoho · 10-17-2015, 06:54 AM

correction: xfdesktop. try to open a terminal and run xfdesktop manually, and report the results (including terminal output).

jjge · 10-17-2015, 07:13 AM

xfdesktop does the trick. Thanks!

BTW: where do I find info of this kind? I'm from the "man" generation, and it seems that documentation is quite different nowadays...

DavidMcCann · 10-17-2015, 11:23 AM

I haven't looked to see if they cover that problem, but Xfce does have a good site with documents, wiki, and forum:
http://www.xfce.org/

ondoho · 10-17-2015, 02:08 PM

http://docs.xfce.org/ to be precise.
and yes, it's true that xfce components' man pages are a joke.
you can always try "xfdesktop --help", or search in /usr/share/doc