XFCE has a very annoying property for new users. When you start the desktop for the first time, it asks whether you want to use the “empty panel” or the “default panel”. Unfortunately, people who are new to Linux (and even some that are not so new) have no idea what the question is asking. What you usually want to click is “default panel”. Clicking on “empty panel” will usually result in unhappy users – the desktop will be completely empty. Nothing there, not even a logout button. Bad luck for the newbie.

So in a pool where I expect most users to know little to nothing about Linux, it may be a good idea to simply remove the question completely. This can be done by copying the default panel to a specific place (why? don’t ask me – but it works):

cp /etc/xdg/xfce4/panel/default.xml /etc/xdg/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-panel.xml

If the user already clicked ’empty panel’, the above doesn’t work. What you can do is to get the question back by removing a few files:

rm -r ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf
rm -r ~/.config/xfce4/desktop
rm -r ~/.cache/sessions/