Thanks, Peter, for the detailed feedback, especially on the known issues. All the feedback I've received has been very helpful. It's time for another report: I've narrowed the problem down a bit and it /does/appear to be software: - I did another clean 9.3 install, but switched my preference at the start to Gnome before going into Detailed Selection. This time, I did /not/ select 'KDE desktop' (which I have always done) or 'All of KDE' (which I've also always done) in addition to Gnome. I *did* select network services, java, experienced user and all of the other packages that I usually select. - At the end of the installation, I went straight into YaST Control Center, then YOU and applied the patches in two steps; kernel solo and last, everything else first. - When the updates were completed and after I rebooted (kernel update) I logged into a perfectly sane, stable and well behaved Gnome 2.10 desktop... the Metacity splash screen text was clean, no Netapplet closing unexpectedly and prompting for a restart, SuSEWatcher & SuSEPlugger properly embedded themselves in the panel, no unusual artifacts stranded on the screen, SuSEconfig did /not/ stall on Gtk2. I customized my desktop, logged out with a 'save settings', did an init 3 and init 5, logged back in and... returned to a sane, stable and well behaved Gnome 2.10 desktop looking exactly as I'd left it. Was I happy? You bet! Satisfied? Nope... - I added supplementary ftp Gnome and KDE to my installation sources then upgraded everything available and... drumroll... it pulled down more KDE packages than GNOME packages and when it was all done every single display anomaly and desktop stability issue returned. Waaaaaah! If you haven't followed this thread, here is what is significant: This time, it took me /two/ steps to 'break' SuSE 9.3, whereas before it was 'breaking' on my system as soon as I installed it. I tried the upgrade on top of 9.2, twice... once with and once without the supplementary upgrades. I tried two 'clean' installs... one with my /home partition on ext3 and then with /home on Reiserfs. Then I restored my 9.2 setup again, but added partitions to install 9.3 side-by-side, where I am now. So... am I the *only* person who has gotten into the habit of selecting Gnome, KDE Desktop /and/ All of KDE at the start of the installation? If there are inherent conflicts when doing this, why didn't YaST2/rpm pick it up? Is there some other mechanism that should have alerted me that this would result in a less than satisfactory environment? This is my first bad experience with a SuSE installation, so I've probably been spoiled. I happen to like KDE /and/ Gnome. I've gotten used to switching between them depending on the program I want to run. Am I being forced to choose between them now? Looking forward to any and all comments... regards, - Carl