Comment 2 for bug 454487

I can confirm this behavior. I just upgraded my system from jaunty to karmic, and I found that gnome-settings-daemon would not start when running a free-nx session. However, g-s-d started properly when I started a normal gnome session (no free-nx). Then I disabled the xrandr plug-in, and g-s-d was able to start in a free-nx session.