Every once in a while, unpredictably, the gnome-panel dives into a handbasket and screeches downslope to the nether regions. The workplace switcher, my most essential app, disappears and cannot be displayed. You can pretend to add it to the panel, but that produces only a barely visible vertical line which pretends to let you set preferences, but honors none of them, much less switches workplaces for you. Other things are also messed up. Every window you open launchez in the upper left corner -- where it obscures most of the left panel; and there is no way to get one window out from under another except to close the upper one by clicking on File and Close Window. You cannot drag any window anywhere, even once you manage to get to it. I have tried removing the bottom panel, and found myself unable to create another. I have tried "yum remove gnome-panel," taking careful note of all that goes with it, and then telling "yum install <whatever all>. The only thing that has ever helped is a fresh install -- and then the whole thing may go bad *again* at any time. I make a habit of running the following sequence every day or three : yum clean all, rpm --rebuilddb, updatedb, and yum update. I also log out and back in occasionally, and whenever anything seems out of order, I reboot a lot more often than anyone running linux should ever have to imagine doing. All this keeps happening on three different machines. I spend more time cleaning up after F7 -- or rather, trying to with no success or precious little -- than getting any work done. I've just had to go through the nine tedious yards of removing and re-installing gnome-panel for the umpteenth time -- and none of it did a bit of good. What the blazes is wrong? Is there some suicidial applet that takes the workspace switcher (and, it sometimes seems, the whole window- manager) down with it whenever it self-destructs? What can I do?? -- Beartooth Staffwright, PhD, Neo-Redneck Linux Convert Remember I know precious little of what I am talking about.
