Prevent Xfce from darwing desktop background

[David Mohr]

On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 3:12 AM,  <andreas at an3as.eu> wrote:
>> simply run "xfdesktop --quit" from a terminal and save
>> your session when you log out.
>
> Which worked after I 'kill -9'ed a remaining xfdesktop which at
> first gave me the screwed screen - but after logging of and in again
> I at least get a "first view" on xplanet.  Now every window (like
> the splash screen, the auto hidden menu and any other window leaves
> a gray shadow on my screen and once I had one full screen window
> my desktop is completely gray again.  This seems to be due to the
> fact that xfce windowmanager does not respect the fact that xfdesktop
> is not running.
>
>>>> Are you telling xplanet to draw to xfdesktop's window?  If not, why not?
>>>>   If not, I don't see how it ever worked in 4.4.
>>>
>>> I have no ideao how I could tell this.
>>
>> Then you need to get googling.  This topic has been discussed several
>> times over the past few years.
>
> You probably mean links like this[1].  But this PNG-creation + cron
> job solution is not really what I'd call a workaround for the problem
> that xfwm4 leaves gray desktop background behind, right?
> Or do I miss any other configuration option?
>
>> Well, we both did misunderstand, but this might still be a useful
>> feature, for people who want to use xplanet (or something similar), but
>> still want access to the menus.  Up to you if you feel like following up
>> with a feature request.
>
> I think we are now approaching some light in the sequence of
> missunderstandings: It is not xfdesktop's problem (well it is now
> switched of as I did it before in version 4.4) but xfwm4 behaves
> differently - and if you ask me I'm insisting that it is a bug if
> a window manager does not restore the background he put a window
> on.

Maybe you still have compositing turned on? If I recall correctly,
that changes some behavior about the root window.

~David