Not sure if this is expected, but I still find it weird: When I use "ssh -X" to that machine to try to start qdirstat via remote X, it still appears on that Wayland display (i.e. in the VM, not on the remote X server), and it looks just fine (with unscaled fonts, but otherwise perfectly normal). It complains on that ssh command line: libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast So it might simply ignore the desktop settings now.