Comment 17 for bug 239342

  gconftool-2 --set --type boolean /apps/gnome-settings-daemon/plugins/mouse/active false

does not work.

  sudo gconftool-2 --set --type boolean /apps/gnome-settings-daemon/plugins/mouse/active false

does not work.

rebooted after both just to be sure (as I wasn't sure if the change was immediate or not).

An observation: When VNC is first launched, the theme I've chosen displays fine. When a new window is opened (say terminal or firefox or any other app), I notice the theme reverts to a default them (presumably because the settings daemon crashed?), then if the daemon successfully relaunches, I get my themed desktop back.

One surefire way to crash the daemon for good is to launch firefox and just wait. the daemon repeated crashes and the themes go back and forth about 5 or 10 times, then the dialog comes up saying the daemon crashed too many times and is disabled, after which, I have a stable (but not themed) desktop.