It seems this happens when there are 'gtk-bookmarks' to (slow) gnome-vfs remote servers.
Apps which do not use gnome-vfs, like abiword, were not afected. This happens only for gnome-vfs items in gtk-bookmarks; mounted remote servers that are shown on the desktop and "Network" do not cause this behaviour. -- Some dialogues take a long time to open https://launchpad.net/bugs/42372 -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs