Are you on a netbook by any chance? My netbook does the same thing with
GNOME, but KDE works fine.

No need to re-install BTW. Just open up the package manager in XFCE and
install ubuntu-desktop. When it is done log out and hit the session button
and choose Ubuntu Desktop Edition instead of XFCE. Login and you should be
using the familiar Ubuntu GNOME interface. You can remove XFCE if you want
now that you have GNOME working. If the shutdown problem persists then you
should search for posted bugs on Launchpad.

I just wanted to use xubuntu... i like its simplicity. Ubuntu has got
complicated now. I've always felt the October version was a bit
experimental (that's what i've noticed over the years). I've just been
installing 10.04 - got gparted... 10.10 dropped it [i suppose one is
expected to use parted on the cli].

Just finished. works perfectly... hate to sound cynical but as for
'cutting edge' - April versions seem to be well sorted... october
seems a bit of a rush job to me [in my experience now 3 yrs].

Not all April releases are stabler the October ones, just LTS releases which
last April's was. Typically the October after an LTS is more bleeding edge
and this one was rushed a bit to meet to 10-10-10 deadline. It should have
been released on October 28th. That may explain some of the glitches.

Yes i'd agree there. All i was trying to say was that even the non-LTS
April releases tend to be better than the October ones. October always
seem to be rushed from what i can gather. I still think *buntu would
be better off with a well sorted annual release.... just imho.

I did look at some other distros recently - rpm seems to take so long
to update [pclos produce an excellent looking distro but ruined with
rpm... again imho (which probably isn't saying much!). After countless
hours fiddling around i still reckon to stay *buntu.

And yet invariably some of us have different experiences. Intrepid is
still my favourite release, expired though it now is. It was the first
one where everything on my system worked (more or less) out of the box,
and the one that finally sold me on Ubuntu. Both Jaunty and Karmic were
problematic by comparison.

But Lucid's been great, and so far Maverick's looking to be a useful
advance on that.

Not everybody should upgrade to Maverick because Lucid was an LTS release.
If you crave stable and are happy then do NOT upgrade. Lucid has one more
year of support than Maverick, strange as that sounds. When it comes time to
upgrade then you can upgrade to the next LTS without upgrading through the
intervening releases.

Maverick is meant to be for people who want to be part of the process of
improving K/X/Ubuntu. It is more like what Red Hat is doing with Fedora.
Fedora is for the guinea pigs and improvements will eventually trickle own
to Red Hat's next release

I second this. I just got all the laptops in my house dual booting with
10.04. So far, so good!