The other day my desktop disappeared in Xubuntu Karmic (9.10). First I did not notice since the background was still visible, but no icons showed up (which I rarely use, appart from removable media) and the very useful middleclick showing all processes on all desktops did not work anymore.
Took quite some googling, but Ubuntuforums had the answer:
Alt-F2 to open the application starter and
xfdesktop
started the desktop process again…
The desktop process must have failed the other day and after exiting the session this configuration was safed… even restarting did not change it.
