Comment 6 for bug 576466

>
> Stenten, please run this in terminal:
> gconftool-2 --type string --set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout
> “menu:minimize,maximize,close”
> ... and say if this helped you.

All this did was make my 'close' button disappear; it did not fix the
problem. I had to switch to a different theme and then back to my custom one
to get the close button back.