following a suggestion by Bernard Walle, i added to xinitrc : if [ `ps aux | grep $USER | grep kdeinit | wc -l` -le 2 ] ; then kdeinit & fi in order to speed up the start of KDE applications. this has the bad side-effect of spoiling the panel: see shots: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~purslow/snapshot1.png http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~purslow/snapshot2.png snapshot 1 is the normal panel, snapshot 2 is deformed by being shorter & having a different (ugly) font. when i exit XFCE & restart (without rebooting), the panel is restored to its normal form (snapshot 1). when i reboot, the bad effect occurs again.
Well, this is really not a bug with xfce, kdeinit simply changes the Xft values.
I'm sorry, but there's nothing we can do about this. Adding this to your .xinitrc may work: ( sleep 10 ; kdeinit ) & That should start kdeinit after the panel has started (unless that takes more than 10 seconds).