The journal is stored in a separate space of the partition, you cannot access it directly. You can use sudo debugfs /dev/sda# where the # symbol is the number of your partition, and then using logdump in debugfs to print it out. The output is confusing though.
Generally, as a regular user, you don't need to know about the journal. Using ext3/4 will be sufficient to prevent data loss (in most cases).
This link might help: http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/red-hat-fedora-linux/121074-ext3-journal.html
Xfce4-panel can use Gnome panel applets if you install the package xfce4-xfapplet-plugin. Not all applets will make as much sense though. The session applet, for instance, will attempt to log you out of Gnome 2, which isn't running, so it will do nothing. The same goes for applets that handle the screensaver and other such DE-specific things. In those cases, the xfce4-panel will have its own plugins that provides these features.
App-indicators are based on DBus, which means they can be used on any desktop environment that supports it. This is one of the big benefits of indicators. They'll work well on KDE, Gnome Shell, Unity, LXDE, Xfce or any other environment. I do believe that there is a native xfce4 plugin to display indicators, but in any case, you'll be able to use the Gnome panel applet just as you did in Gnome.
Using a custom dock like Docky or AWN, should not be a problem at all. I haven't tried it.
I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to use Compiz and all its plugins. I haven't tried that either. But I have used Xfce4-panel with Compiz, and that works well.
You can use the same icons, but window decorators will be different. Perhaps if you use Compiz, you can still use the other themes, but I don't know.
You can just install xubuntu-desktop, except for a single conflict: the notification system. You'll be told that ubuntu-desktop needs to be uninstalled, but that will not uninstall all your software. However, since both Gnome and Xfce provides tools to handle screensavers, sessions, etc, it might be cleaner to do a fresh install.
Best Answer
Pictures are stored in the folder
/var/lib/AccountsService/icons/[user name]The [user name] is of type image/png format with a size of 96x96 pixels
Under the folder
/var/lib/AccountsService/usersyou have a similar file [user name] that is a .desktop format - for exampleThe
Icon=is not created unless you assign a picture in Users and AccountsIf you assign one of the stock pictures the file will contain - for example
Thus –as you can see– just create an
Icon=entry in/var/lib/AccountsService/user/[user name]to point to your PNG file or overwrite the icon in the similarly named/var/lib/AccountsService/iconsfolder