Are GNOME apps _supposed_ to open slowly?

[William R Pentney <pentney cse Buffalo EDU>]

I've had GNOME on my Debian 2.1 system for a little while now, and despite
all my efforts to the contrary (installing esd, removing esd, reinstalling
gtk, gnomelibs, etc.) it still takes 5-10 seconds for any GNOME
application to open. I've had people tell me this is actually _normal_,
and that some people on GNOME argued it was a Good Thing (TM). This seems
very bizarre to me. Is this delay standard for GNOME? If so, I'm afraid
I'll have to go back to KDE. I like GNOME, but this is very annoying.

- Bill