Long story short: in Fedora 20 (and as far as I remember also 19 and 18) XScreenSaver doesn’t power off the monitor backlight when locking the screen. Being the lazy ass I am it took like me 2 or 3 years to find the motivation to solve the issue. It was actually pretty simple, no need to edit some obscure config file or else, in XFCE just click on: Application menu -> Settings -> Screensaver. A window will appear, select Blank Screen Only in the Mode dropdown menu, then switch to the advanced tab, un-check power Management Enabled and check Quick Power-off in Blank Only Mode. This is it, now every time the screen locks the monitor backlight will also power off. …

Thunar 1.6.2 (the default XFCE file manager) doesn’t seems to provide any kind of built in search function by default. A good way to address this issue is use catfish (which is installed by default in Fedora 18), just open Thunar, go to Edit and then Custom Actions and add the following line: catfish –fileman=thunar –hidden –path=%f

The first time I open Thunar (the default XFCE file manager) in fedora 17 it takes up to 30 seconds to show up. This is most likely due to Thunar trying – without being able – to mount a remote network folder, to solve the issue just open <em>/usr/share/gvfs/mounts/network.mount</em> and set <em>AutoMount=false</em>.