I had a customized gnome-panel in an up to date gentoo gnome2 setup. Then with a gentoo update 'panel' instantiated by gnome startup setup along with my customized 'gnome-panel'. Absolutely hated 'panel' because - it was rigged with a restart so could not kill it - it sat on top of 'gnome-panel' so it blocked my custom gnome-panel - it didn't even have 'mozilla' in apps - and the logout button on it didn't work (!) I finally grepped around and found 'panel' rigged to run in ~/.gnome2/session which I edited while not logged into gnome and ripped out the 'panel' commands. There were 2 of them, one top of screen one bottom of screen. At the moment, it seems I'm okay, but living in fear of some default config kicking back in and reinstantiating those 2 broken panels. I have no idea which of 'panel' and 'gnome-panel' should be running, all I know is I had a working panel customized for my setup and a gentoo update broke the setup. Reproducible: Didn't try Steps to Reproduce: 1. customize gnome-panel in gnome2 2. update gentoo (back late Jul or early Aug) 3. log out and log back into gnome Actual Results: lost my custom gnome-panel because hidden by a dominant and broken 'panel' process Expected Results: kept my gnome-panel settings Gentoo Base System version 1.4.16 Portage 2.0.50-r9 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.3.3, glibc-2.3.3.20040420-r1, 2.6.7-gentoo-r14) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.7-gentoo-r14 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2200+ Autoconf: sys-devel/autoconf-2.59-r4 Automake: sys-devel/automake-1.8.3 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-O2 -march=athlon-xp -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="gcc3" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.1/share/config /usr/kde/3.2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/config /usr/share/texmf/dvipdfm/config/ /usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/texmf/xdvi/ /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=athlon-xp -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs ccache sandbox" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://cudlug.cudenver.edu/gentoo/ ftp://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ http://adelie.polymtl.ca/" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X aalib acpi alsa apm arts avi berkdb bonobo cdr crypt cups curl directfb doc encode esd foomaticdb freetds gb gd gdbm gif gnome gphoto2 gpm gtk gtk2 gtkhtml guile imap imlib java jikes jpeg junit libg++ libwww mad maildir mikmod motif mozilla mpeg mysql ncurses nls odbc oggvorbis opengl oss pam pdflib perl php plotutils png postgres ppds python qt quicktime readline ruby samba sasl scanner sdl slang soap spell ssl svga tcltk tcpd tetex tiff truetype usb wavelan wxwindows x86 xml xml2 xmlrpc xmms xv zlib"
'panel' usually refers to the gnome-1 panel, but your story is rather far-fetched about how it came into being. A panel just doesn't take over the world at some random point in time. If this isn't reproducable and you don't come with some set of steps we should take to reproduce it on our side there is not much we can do.
