[Pan-users] update on freeze, high CPU getting new headers: GNOME!

[David Shochat]

This problem, which I first reported back on August 1 
(http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/pan-users/2008-08/msg00000.html), has 
remained unsolved and highly annoying. Then, 2 days ago, I got an E-mail 
from another pan user saying that he had the same problem, asking 
whether I had found a solution. I told him I had not, and reiterated the 
strange fact that the problem is totally absent when I run pan under 
MacOS X. Somehow, he thought of testing for the problem under Linux, but 
using a different desktop, namely XFCE. Bingo! This made the problem 
vanish (note that we have both been using GNOME under Ubuntu). I 
promptly tried XFCE myself and reproduced his success on my own system. 
And tonight, I loaded KDE onto my system and tried pan there. Once 
again, no trace of the problem. As hard as I find this to believe, it 
appears to be a GNOME problem, or a pan/GNOME incompatibility, at least 
under Ubuntu, both Hardy and the new Intrepid, both 64 (which he is 
running) and 32 bit (which I am). It seems ironic, considering that the 
first pan version I used (let's call it old old pan) was explicitly 
advertised as a GNOME newsreader, and used GNOME libraries. I have been 
a loyal GNOME user for almost 10 years, but XFCE seems to do everything 
I need so I guess it's finally time for a vacation from GNOME. I'll keep 
retrying it from time to time to see if the problem is still there. It 
definitely did not used to be there, so it must have crept in with some 
GNOME/Ubuntu update. Meanwhile, I cannot imagine what the mechanism of 
this could be.
-- David