Inspired by kaptengu and Yerakon's comments, I started with a clean /etc/hosts file (as there was an error message that the local host could not be resolved). I also made sure that the loopback network interface is loaded, as it was omitted in /etc/networking/interfaces. That did the trick for me; gnome comes up instantly.
/etc/hosts: 127.0.0.1 localhost hostname 127.0.1.1 hostname fe00::0 ip6-localnet ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix ff02::1 ip6-allnodes ff02::2 ip6-allrouters ff02::3 ip6-allhosts /etc/network/interfaces: iface lo inet loopback auto lo auto eth0 iface eth0 inet dhcp Use 'ifconfig' to get a list of configured network devices. To set up the loopback device after booting, run 'sudo ifconfig lo 127.0.0.1 up'. -- gnome-settings-daemon crashes at login https://launchpad.net/bugs/61381 -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs
