I found the solution: the schema for gedit wasn't registered with the gconf database. Put all of the following in one command line as super user to register the gedit schema:
GCONF_CONFIG_SOURCE=$(gconftool-2 --get-default-source) gconftool-2 --makefile-install-rule /etc/gconf/schemas/gedit.schemas This should have been done automatically in the post-install of the gedit package. Now all preferences can be changed. Herb
