Sometimes an applet on a Gnome panel doesn't work properly, and cannot be removed by right clicking on it. Perhaps the applet is not even visible, even though it sits there hogging system resources.

This is how you get rid of such an applet.

Disclaimer

* There might be better ways to do this, but this seemed to work fine for me.

* I use Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE), but this should work on other editions of Mint as well.
 

Step 1 - Start gconf-editor
 

 gconf-editor /apps/panel/applets &

The path given is not necessary to start gconf-editor, but it makes it start in that section right away without you having to click your way there.

The ampersand ("&") that is appended last on the command line is not necessary. It is however pretty useful to make a program (in this case gconf-editor) run in the background, so you can still use the terminal without ending that program first.


Step 2 - Check what the gconf folder name is for the applet

Click on a folder to see the keys and settings for that specific applet. There is a key named bonobo_iid where the name of the applet can be found.

In my example I want to remove the Deskbar applet, which for me has the bonobo_iid "OAFIID:Deskbar_Applet" and is found in the gconf folder "applet_3".

Remember the name of the folder you want to remove.

Step 3 - Remove the applet
 

 gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/panel/applets/[gconf folder name]

Make sure you replace [gconf folder name] with the folder name you found in the previous step.

In my example I should type:
 

 gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/panel/applets/applet_3

Step 4 - Restart gnome-panel
 

 killall gnome-panel

This will close down your panels and restart them with the new settings. Or, if you're not in a hurry, you could just wait until next time you restart your computer I guess.