Comment 4 for bug 569714

1. I got gdesklets 0.36.1 working on Lucid (after upgrading) by applying the fix described here:
http://forum.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=32554

or to avoid the jump:
sudo cp /usr/lib/gdesklets/utils/ErrorFormatter.py /usr/lib/gdesklets/utils/ErrorFormatter.py.orig
sudo vi /usr/lib/gdesklets/utils/ErrorFormatter.py

# 09/08/09:per article=http://forums.opensuse.org/applications/409465-fix-gdesklets.html
#def _new_imp(name, globs = {}, locls = {}, fromlist = []):
def _new_imp(name, globs = {}, locls = {}, fromlist = [], test = []):

2. Starting $gdesklets shell then spews a warning, but still starts:

/usr/lib/gdesklets/utils/ErrorFormatter.py:119: DeprecationWarning: the md5 module is deprecated; use hashlib instead
  module = _old_imp(name, globs, locls, fromlist)

3. Also, Log messages show:
/usr/lib/gdesklets/config/ConfigDialog.py:77: DeprecationWarning: Use the new widget
gtk.Tooltip
  self.__tooltips = gtk.Tooltips()
/usr/lib/gdesklets/config/ConfigDialog.py:78: DeprecationWarning: Use the new widget
gtk.Tooltip
  self.__tooltips.enable()

Hope this helps.

Cheers
Bill