broken GNOME requires openbox

[thufir]

For some reason GNOME, GNOME classic and GNOME classic (no effects) is 
broken for one particular user.  The panels don't load correctly, so 
there's no way to logout.  (At first I used REISUB, but then thankfully 
found that you can enable ctrl-alt-backspace to kill xwindows:  
http://www.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/gnome_x_server.png, glad 
to see that back.)

I've tried to get used to GNOME/openbox, but this (older) system gets 
just a little bogged down by the odd panel.  So, while I have LXDE and 
XFCE, I'd like to go back to GNOME classic (no effects).

'Creating a panel in an empty desktop

Right click in the desktop and create a launcher to execute "gnome-
panel". '

http://live.gnome.org/GnomePanel says:


However, I was looking for something like "panel1.txt" or something along 
those lines, but nothing in:

thufir at dur:~$ 
thufir at dur:~$ ll .g
.gconf/          .gnome2/         .gstreamer-0.10/ .gtkrc-2.0
.gem/            .gnome2_private/ .gtk-bookmarks   .gvfs/
thufir at dur:~$ 


Also, I suppose this might happen again.  Why would a panel sort of get 
caught in a loop and not load, but nothing else would work either?  
However, the account works fine with GNOME/openbox.



-Thufir