Comment 3 for bug 28744

This problem is really, really bad, if your machine is not screaming fast, it takes hours to upgrade 30 Gnome related packages. Upon further examination with strace, it seems that for *each package*, all the files in /var/lib/gconf/defaults/ get regenerated 20 or 30 times. Is it regenerating ALL the XML files for each file installed or something?

There has GOT to be some potential for optimization here... I'm afraid to upgrade because pulling in a handful of Gnome packages will make my machine grind to a crawl for the rest of the afternoon. I am afraid "very slow" is a significant understatement of the problem...