[Wlug] Problem with gnome, Fedora core 3

Gentlemen and ladies, My Fedora Core 3 - which has been yum'd up to date - behaves strangely when using GNOME as the windows manager. The right click on blank desktop space does not work. The right click on a panel to make a new panel does not work. The result is that I can not set up any launching icons on my desktop. There is no unused space on my one (bottom) panel. The panel-disappear icon is missing. Any ideas what controls this behavior and ow I can fix it? On a different machine I have a Core4 system running GNOME perfectly. Ken Jones