TA-t3: thanks. Any effort to find a problem is appreciated. And it is interesting that it compiles in Debian. In scratchbox I add the desktop file to statusbar.conf in ".osso/hildon-desktop" maybe Debian has something similar for its statusbar.

Regarding the memory leak, I have been running the latest version for well over 12 hours now, and hildon-desktop is taking up 13MB, which is the same as boot up. I am not sure if it went higher then release or if it just hasn't been consuming like it did. Has anyone else noticed this?