After a recent upgrade from Xubuntu 19.04 to 19.10, I attempted to change the Theme from Moheli to Default. I was able to make the change and it was immediately reflected in the displayed windows. However, after logging out and logging in the setting was back to Moheli. I discovered that the theme was stored in the ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfwm4.xml file under the entry: <property name="theme" type="string" value="Moheli"/> and it was not updated when changed in the Window Manager. I manually edited this to: <property name="theme" type="string" value="Default"/> but the next time I logged in, this was reset to Moheli. I decided that the window manager must be writing out its internal setting upon exit, so I logged out of Xfce4, remotelly logged into a shell and re-edited the file. This worked and now when I reboot/login the Default theme is active and shows up as such in the Window Manager. I believe I changed the theme to Moheli back in 19.04 and it immediately took. Something seems to have changed with 19.10.
Are you able to reproduce the initial problem? Note that the XML file should not be manually edited while the xfconf process is still running. More information here: https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfconf/start
Well, /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xfce4/xfconf/xfconfd is typically running when the desktop is active. However, the problem exists even if none of the settings windows are active. It's not really important as to the conditions that would allow the XML to be manually edited, as this was only an emergency action taken to work around the apparent bug. What is important is that Settings Manager->Window Manager->Theme changes should take permanently as expected, and not revert after the current session ends.
So, other xfconf settings are affected also? If yes, then the bug needs to be assigned to the xfconf component.
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