Xfce and xfdesktop
The reason the ROX desktop wasn’t showing up was because xfce4-session was running xfdesktop4 every time it was started such that ROX’s pinboard was hidden behind xfdesktop. Now the obvious idea would be to go to the デスクトップ (Desktop - yes, my locale is ja_JP.utf8) settings and tell xfdesktop not to manage my desktop
as the English localisation said.
There was no documentation on the xfdesktop’s or xfce4-session’s RC files or on disabling xfdesktop, so I Googled disable xfdesktop. The first result neither works nor is in Google’s cache, but the summary said:
I am using idesk to show icons on my desktop, so I had to disable xfdesktop. I disabled it by renaming its binary so Xfce does not find it anymore and is unable to load it. I would like to know if there is another way to do it, …
So I conceded defeat and ran sudo apt-get remove xfdesktop4. Unfortunately the menu on my panel was somehow connected to xfdesktop and so that’s gone. But ah well; at least ROX’s pinboard shows up.
Apart from that one problem, Xfce is very good. It even does fancy compositing if you add some things to your xorg.conf. Not useful, but pretty. It took me a while to work out what all the options did, being that I don’t know the Japanese for opacity of the window when it’s being moved/resized, etc..