I had the same problem but fixed it by playing with rox settings.Does anybody here remember Mark Ulrich (aka MU, of NYPup fame) mentioning a fix for oroborus, you know, the annoyance it is that you have to click on the background to get some programs to appear after launch in oroborus.

Do you have the - override window manager unclicked
and
clicked - pass all backdrop mouse clicks to window manager in rox's options (compatibility)?
i like to use xsri set a background.

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 7f12775ab3