I fixed this on my cinnamon-only system by removing the
gnome-settings-daemon package. The gnome-settings-daemon package kept
starting a process that took over xsettings (the process' name ended in
gsd-xsettings).
- Bug#872029: cinnamon-settings-daemon: does not rema... S. Porth
- Bug#872029: cinnamon-settings-daemon: does not... Justin Mazzola Paluska
