Gnome menu loads the menu icons as needed causing a delay before you can see the icons. FIX : gtk-update-icon-cache -f /usr/share/icons/THEMENAME/ Replace the THEMENAME with the actual icon theme set you are using. The default is ‘ gnome ‘. echo gtk-menu-popup-delay = 100 >> ~/.gtkrc-2.0 Gnome also hogs resouces my animations that are barely noticeable. To enable these resource saving features open gconf, from terminal: gconf-editor from there go to: /apps/metacity/general and check on reduced_resources also: /apps/panel/global and uncheck enable_animations also: /desktop/gnome/interface and check off the box for accessibility source: http://www.marksanborn.net/linux/turn-off-gnome-animations-and-hide-window-contents-while-dragging/ The other less known issues are compcache / ramzswap and clamd . Ramzswap uses physical memory as swap space thereby causing memory lock-ups. It is vestiges of the Live-CD which requires this feature when no swap s