For the last couple months, I've noticed that GTK+ applications can be very slow to start on my Guix / Debian system. It may take up to a minute before they finish launching. Here's an strace log of 'mousepad' startup. The pause occurs at line 3638, and then resumes after the the timeout is reached. Excerpt: ------ 3621 [pid 10026] poll([{fd=7, events=POLLIN}], 1, 0) = 0 (Timeout) 3622 [pid 10026] poll([{fd=6, events=POLLIN}], 1, 0) = 1 ([{fd=6, revents=POLLIN}]) 3623 [pid 10026] recvmsg(6, {msg_name=NULL, msg_namelen=0, msg_iov=[{iov_base="l\2\1\1\0\0\0\0\f\0\0\0005\0\0\0", iov_len=16}], msg_iovlen=1, msg_controllen=0, msg_flags=MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC}, MSG _CMSG_CLOEXEC) = 16 3624 [pid 10026] poll([{fd=7, events=POLLIN}], 1, 0) = 0 (Timeout) 3625 [pid 10026] poll([{fd=6, events=POLLIN}], 1, 0) = 1 ([{fd=6, revents=POLLIN}]) 3626 [pid 10026] recvmsg(6, {msg_name=NULL, msg_namelen=0, msg_iov=[{iov_base="\6\1s\0\6\0\0\0:1.337\0\0\5\1u\0\n\0\0\0\7\1s\0\24\0\0\0"..., iov_len=56}], msg_iovlen=1, msg_controllen=0, msg_f lags=MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC}, MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC) = 56 3627 [pid 10026] poll([{fd=7, events=POLLIN}], 1, 0) = 0 (Timeout) 3628 [pid 10026] poll([{fd=6, events=POLLIN}], 1, 0) = 1 ([{fd=6, revents=POLLIN}]) 3629 [pid 10026] recvmsg(6, {msg_name=NULL, msg_namelen=0, msg_iov=[{iov_base="l\2\1\1\0\0\0\0\r\0\0\0005\0\0\0", iov_len=16}], msg_iovlen=1, msg_controllen=0, msg_flags=MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC}, MSG _CMSG_CLOEXEC) = 16 3630 [pid 10026] poll([{fd=7, events=POLLIN}], 1, 0) = 0 (Timeout) 3631 [pid 10026] poll([{fd=6, events=POLLIN}], 1, 0) = 1 ([{fd=6, revents=POLLIN}]) 3632 [pid 10026] recvmsg(6, {msg_name=NULL, msg_namelen=0, msg_iov=[{iov_base="\6\1s\0\6\0\0\0:1.337\0\0\5\1u\0\v\0\0\0\7\1s\0\24\0\0\0"..., iov_len=56}], msg_iovlen=1, msg_controllen=0, msg_f lags=MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC}, MSG_CMSG_CLOEXEC) = 56 3633 [pid 10026] poll([{fd=7, events=POLLIN}], 1, 0) = 0 (Timeout) 3634 [pid 10026] poll([{fd=6, events=POLLIN}], 1, 0) = 0 (Timeout) 3635 [pid 10026] write(7, "\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0", 8) = 8 3636 [pid 10026] poll([{fd=6, events=POLLIN}, {fd=7, events=POLLIN}], 2, -1) = 1 ([{fd=7, revents=POLLIN}]) 3637 [pid 10026] read(7, "\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0", 16) = 8 3638 [pid 10026] poll([{fd=6, events=POLLIN}, {fd=7, events=POLLIN}], 2, -1 3639 [pid 10024] <... poll resumed> ) = 0 (Timeout) ------