One more piece of the jigsaw -
The formal beta of U20.04 Gnome seems better than the three day previous development release !
Installing appmenu-gtk2.module does seem to fix it, but only if you logoff and back in again. That logoff and, more importantly, login must load appmenu-gtk2-module properly.
This test is using FPC320 and Lazarus trunk, in each test I started Lazarus and stopped it immediately ten times and then started lazarus and clicked 'run' to compile and run the empty form show by default, again, ten times. With U20.04 beta, aptmenu-gtk2-module and a restart, perfect score.
The April 1st release of U20.04 would have entered the 25 second delay at least five times and the empty form would have crashed on exit, 'most' times.
Thats pretty good news IMHO, in a world starved for good news.
Davo