My setup:
4790k cpu
rx580 8GB sapphire nitro vid card
Logitech 710+ keyboard
Logitech g600 mouse
z97mpro4 motherboard
1440p 144hz ips monitor
intel 750 800GB pci express ssd ( manjaro …was installed into)
1TB 860 samsung evo drive ( games, docs, etc)
1TB 860 samsung evo drive ( gopro backups)
1TB micron drive ( timeshift backups for mint 20 installation)
I experienced this exact same problem also on Manjaro 20
It began occurring some random time after I either copy and pasted some files from a separate storage drive into my Manjaro-installed drive, or while I was fighting with the xfce panel trying to set it up like I have my Mint 20 cinnamon panel. Or, possibly it began as a result of an update. ( good grief…the creators of xfce need to take a lesson from cinnamon. Legit, cinnamon is so much easier to deal with)
The thing is, I confirmed over and over that both the left and right super keys had absolutely nothing to do with ending the xfce4 session. So when I pressed the super key by itself, it was only supposed to open the whisker menu, but it would basically crash the session/put it in a temporary coma and it would stay that way ( I literally waited over an hour for it to auto come back and never would) until I pressed ctrl alt F7. Then everything came back within 3 seconds or less with the whisker menu open as it should be.
I’ve looked all over the net and your post , zimudec, is the only thing I’ve encountered about this.
Surely someone out there has a fix for this odd and seemingly simple problem. I even purposely changed the default end-xfce4 session OOTB keyboard shortcut key combo to something completely different that I would never use ( I think ctrl alt shift = or +…something like that) and the problem still persisted.
Upon a fresh install of Manjaro 20, the problem is gone, but it reappears after some random time or doing something. I have yet to figure this out
Unfortunately as often as I use the left super key to open that menu ( just like i did in windows from 7 onward and mint cinnamon), this problem makes it a deal-breaker for me trying to use Manjaro, and that saddens me a little. I really wanted to test to see if kernel 5.8 would yield a little better/more stable frame times gaming results for my setup; not that my Mint 20 cinnamon install isn’t solid so far.
Edit:
I never suspend my system in any way sleep nor hibernate as that is already turned off by the time I’m done setting it up. I don’t suspend my laptop either.
If anyone has any ideas I could try, please let me know. I really want to give Manjaro a fair shake here as I’ve heard good things about it from the likes of Anthony from Linus Media Group and a few good things from Chris Titus Tech.