Okay, I can confirm that this bug is NOT caused by the panel background image. A few reboots after disabling the Ambiance theme's panel background, I got the corruption again.
Now, I have yet to get the corruption using Lucid's version of the Dust theme, even though it also uses the Murrine engine. So, here are three configs on my laptop and their results:
1) Lucid with Ambiance theme: corruption
2) Karmic with Dust theme: corruption
3) Lucid with Dust theme: no corruption (after a few days of use w/ frequent rebooting... I will keep testing)
Both Ambiance and Dust use the Murrine theme engine. If the Lucid version of the Dust theme can be verified to not have the corruption glitch, then we might be able to get some clues as to what exactly in the Murrine engine is causing this glitch.
Okay, I can confirm that this bug is NOT caused by the panel background image. A few reboots after disabling the Ambiance theme's panel background, I got the corruption again.
Now, I have yet to get the corruption using Lucid's version of the Dust theme, even though it also uses the Murrine engine. So, here are three configs on my laptop and their results:
1) Lucid with Ambiance theme: corruption
2) Karmic with Dust theme: corruption
3) Lucid with Dust theme: no corruption (after a few days of use w/ frequent rebooting... I will keep testing)
Both Ambiance and Dust use the Murrine theme engine. If the Lucid version of the Dust theme can be verified to not have the corruption glitch, then we might be able to get some clues as to what exactly in the Murrine engine is causing this glitch.