is normal for new gimp install hanging on when loading fonts the first time gimp you run gimp, after a new install is expected be very slow when loading fonts

that because the first time it will create its own font cache, and that will allow other times to be much quicker to load

So i doubt that gimp may load quicker thank to other gtk software installed, i believe that now load quicker because the first time had to slowly index all the fonts,and then the following times it load quicker because that long task is not more needed

As side note inthe hipotetical case Gimp will froze again when loading fonts that may mean that font cache get somehow corrupted , to solve you should simply delete it and reload gimp

again will be very slow because will recreate the cache,

and again the following times will be much quicker

After a system reinstall (HDD change) on my HP nc8230 notebook, GIMP was starting painfully slow, almost bloking itself at Fonts-something startup splash screen. This was something new for me, as in the previous WinXP system install GIMP started almost immediately.

Searching a bit I noticed that this happens to be a common issue on many Windows systems, where some have mentioned something about GTK+. This pointed me to the question - what was different in my previous system install related to GTK+ ? Answer - two more GTK+ applications (except for Sylpheed, which does not matter for the subject), Pidgin and GPA. So I installed Pidgin (2.4.2), et voil?, GIMP now starts immediately !

So who knows, maybe this info can be of some help for others too ... (and perhaps for GIMP developers too :)

Cristi