I have seen this in both x86 and x86_64. Fedora 17, Xfce 4.10 both x86 and x86_64 1. Select list of image files for desktop background dialog tab, ensure "Image List" button is checked. 2. Check the box for (Change the background (in minutes). Enter a value. I have it set to 15 minutes. 3. Wait. Most of the time on my X86_64 system, the background changes regularly as expected. However, I noticed that recently, it seems to be stuck. I can log out and in and the background will have changed. However, the timed change does not seem to be happening. On my wife's x86 system, this has been happening for some time. I can go in and double-check the settings, and they are correct. The image files are in the correct location and the box to change the background image is checked. I am not sure what has changed that this is no longer working properly. Display compositing is enabled, but it was also when this was working. I would appreciate assistance in getting this working again. I could revert to the method I used with Xfce 4.8 if necessary (restart desktop with a cron file entry) but it would be better to get Xfce 4.10's background changing function fixed.
I can confirm this bug on my systems as well running Arch Linux x86_64. A dirty work-around is to add the following to your user's crontab, but I agree that the native functionality in xfdesktop should work as expected. */20 * * * * [[ ! -z $(pidof xfdesktop) ]] && DISPLAY=:0.0 /usr/bin/xfdesktop --reload Note that the above cycles from your list once every 20 min; adjust as needed. Also see the following: https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9488 As you can see, xfdesktop does not keep track of which images in the list are displayed. The result is that some images in a list get frequently shown while others rarely do. A more robust implementation of the random background feature should randomly displaying an image in the list and not repeat it until all list members have been displayed.
I see this as well on XFCE 4.10 on Gentoo (xfce-base/xfdesktop-4.10.0). It looks like the background does change one time, after xfdesktop starts and the specified time elapses, but then never changes again.
I wrote a script that does this behavior: https://github.com/graysky2/backdrop-randomizer
This is likely a duplicate of bug #8962 which was fixed in git master branch by commit b543ea26089a2521317cf18cfffb979ba2ff5909. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 8962 ***