I can confirm this. I am booted into a no-daemon setup right now. Similar issues as Damiano details -- mounted drives don't appear, etc. I think it is a pretty serious bug, since it gives a bad impression of Ubuntu (not to mention cuts down on productivity due to the mounted drive issue.)
This is what I get when I run it manually (which works.) :~$ gnome-settings-daemon ** (gnome-settings-daemon:7652): WARNING **: Unable to connect to dbus: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-vxgf8S5VVv: Connection refused (gnome-settings-daemon:7652): GnomeKbdIndicator-WARNING **: Unable to connect to dbus: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-vxgf8S5VVv: Connection refused (gnome-settings-daemon:7652): GnomeKbdIndicator-WARNING **: Not connected to dbus, will not register the object xrdb: "*Label.background" on line 220 overrides entry on line 150 xrdb: "*Text.background" on line 226 overrides entry on line 191 xrdb: "*Label.foreground" on line 232 overrides entry on line 151 xrdb: "*Text.foreground" on line 238 overrides entry on line 192 ** (gnome-screensaver:7659): WARNING **: failed to register with the message bus -- [gutsy] Gnome settings daemon does randomly not work https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/146946 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is the bug contact for Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs