Right-click on desktop: desktop icons vanish leaving only the background. Log out of xfce and the console session from which "startx" invoked. Switch to root console; `htop` Xfdesktop is pegged at the top of the process list using 90-100% of one cpu. The shared pages stays constant (SHR), however the total program size (VIRT) and the resident set size (RES) both keep increasing. I've watched them exceed the 4Gb physical ram size and start using the swap partition. Tried setting its nice=20 and priority=39 from 0/20, but VIRT and RES keep increasing. Meanwhile, if I don't catch it while still in XFCE4.10.0, things get sluggish, switch virtual desktops and the program windows remain grayed out for a second or so before coming back to life, which is expected when a process is using more and more memory resources. XFCE will eventually freeze. With the xfce4 user logged out, all other x-related processes closed, xfdesktop remains active. It's not just right-click the desktop, sometimes a program launch will do the same thing. When I see no icons on the left side of the screen, it's time to hurry up and log out. Root can `kill -9` the runaway zombie, then the user can log back in, startx, and xfce4 behaves as advertised. This appears similar to Bug #9892. [Gotta run, things are getting sluggish.] Slackware Current All xfce packages installed, all libraries installed. Nothing of note appears in any of the logs or dmesg. Meanwhile, the oom killer may be killing other processes, I haven't observed that; it leaves xfdesktop alone.
Please accept my apology. It is obvious to me that there is something missing or misconfigured; this is not a problem with xfdesktop, but with my installation. I can't replicate the behaviour on another system running xfce4. I'm closing this as a IOK (Idiot Operating Keyboard). I still wonder what would cause xfdesktop to remain active after xfce4 is closed, but that's academic, not something with which to pester hard-working underpaid developers. Thank you for your patience.