Desktop change consequences

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Mon, 08 Apr 2013 19:45:40 +0200, Pete Wright <pnwright at gmail.com> wrote:
> If this question is too “newbie” or worse, heretical, please forgive and
> then ignore me.

It isn't, you should asked what ever you want, sure, you also should  
search the web yourself a little bit, but since that isn't easy for a  
newbie, you better asked a question to much, than a question to less.

I don't use Unity, so I don't have knowledge about it. Usually, if a  
window is focused, the shortcut should work for that Window. This doesn't  
work for every shortcut, but every desktop environment, resp. windows  
manager should provide the option to change shortcuts by the user.

I suspect that if you install Unity, everything will become as it was, but  
there might be a menu to change or disable shortcuts.

OTOH in a hurry I couldn't find how to disable the mouse wheel button for  
Xfce4, they can hide options very good, if they want ;).

As somebody else already mentioned, you can install Unity beside Xfce4.  
Theoretically this should work for all DEs, but sometimes it does cause  
issues, when using on Desktop environment A the browser from environment B  
the session could become a mix of both desktop environments, or desktop  
environment X has got 2 trash cans on the Desktop, one that is used and  
another, from environment Z.