Jared pointed me at : https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8841 and indeed the patch in there solves the problem, but even simpler: I just edited my .xsession file to read: --8<-- #! /bin/sh exec dbus-launch --exit-with-session startxfce4 -->8-- and that also makes everything work fine again. Martin