A debian user reproted [0] that when a plugin was removed from a panel, its process was still there, but defunct. The removed plugins should terminate gracefully and not end up defunct like this. Cheers. [0]: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=457395
This seems fixed in 4.5.90 Pinkie
*** Bug 4490 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Please reopen if you still have problems with this.