[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#765383: policykit-1: can't poweroff or restart from xfce4 user menu

[Daniel Richard G.]

Hello gnath,

I just came from bug #778738, which discussed this same issue.

Unfortunately, the libpam-systemd and systemd packages are needed in
order to track user sessions and ultimately enable the Xfce log-out
dialog to present restart/shutdown/etc. options, even if systemd is not
the active init system.

Previously, user-session tracking was performed by ConsoleKit, but
ConsoleKit is unmaintained and the last release (0.4.6, from summer
2013) advises users to switch to logind, a component of systemd. There
does not currently appear to be a suitable user-session framework aside
from these two, although with so many people unhappy with the design of
systemd I think we'll see some new options before long.

Note that having the systemd package installed does not mean that it is
the active init system; it is actually the systemd-sysv package that
does this.

I wish I had a better answer, but that appears to be the current state
of things in the Xfce/Debian/Linux world.