I disabled the automatic contacts plugin, but the delay was still just as bad as ever. Also, I'm not sure what you mean by attaching to gdb and getting traces.I faced it sometime back and found that it will be caused when bbdb (automatic contacts plugin) is working in full-swing. This is obviously a problem and am planning to take the sync-part out of preferences-launching. This should be in 2.22 series soon. Anyways, to make sure what you are facing is the same issue, can you attach to gdb and get traces when you face the delay after you click on preferences ?
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