gnome is VERY slow to start and i get no panel. so i tried portupgrade -fR x11/XFree86-4-clients portupgrade -fr Xft which took a little while <grin>. still no panel. but it does seem to be trying randy 44277 0.0 1.8 13828 9464 ?? Is 4:52AM 0:00.25 gnome-panel --sm-config-prefix /gnome-panel-McgeCy/ --sm-client-id cluze? randy