Due to window management problems with certain applications, I've replaced Xfwm with Openbox. 'killall -9 xfwm4; openbox & exit', then log out and save the session, and it works...
Except that it now takes Xfce over twenty seconds to start up, most of which are spent sitting on a blank desktop.
Looking at the console output, the reason for this appears to be that startxfce is repeatedly trying (and failing) to start xfwm4, after Openbox has already been started. Preventing this seems simple, but it's not - xfwm4 is not in the list of session startup items, and the config settings editor doesn't seem to mention anything on whether or not it should be launched. So I'm still scratching my head.
Does anyone here know how I can stop xfwm4 from launching, ever? Without resorting to a major kludge like making the binary non-executable?
Edit: Solved. This seems to be some kind of session management bug; removing ~/.cache/sessions fixed it completely, and I now have a nice fast Openbox/Xfce desktop.
I
Edit again: Hey, where'd my Openbox go? Suddenly the session won't save, and I'm back to xfwm4. I seem to have a choice now between
1. xfwm4, and the desktop showing up fast but certain apps not working right
2. Openbox, and waiting 20+ seconds for the desktop to start due to Xfce stupidly trying to restart xfwm4.
Help?
Edit yet again: I somehow managed to make it work again. I really have no idea how. I'm starting to think this is a bug in Xfce.