I think that in any case gnome-panel's behavior year is buggy, but what leans me toward the packaging system being part at fault too is that I can change, add, and remove menu contents using alacarte all day long without this bug appearing. Of course, this is in userland, but I can do the same with system menu entries.
For example, cp /usr/share/applications/totem.desktop /usr/share/applications/totem2.desktop . Now there are two entries for totem under "Sound & Video" without the bug appearing. Now edit totem2.desktop and where it says Categories=, change "AudioVideo" to say "Utility". Now totem appears under accessories. Now delete totem2.desktop, and totem's phantom menu entry disappears, all of this without the bug appearing. -- gnome-panel doesn't show all menu items https://launchpad.net/bugs/30146 -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs