Please forgive the heavy cross-posting and feel free to
delete inappropriate groups when you reply.  I am really at
a loss and hope someone has an answer for my problems.

Environment:

Redhat Enterprise 3, Gnome or KDE, Generic PC, 1.5 GHz P-III
CPU, 256 MB RAM, Sun JRE 1.5.0_2.

(These problems present on multiple hardware configurations.
Some have 3 GHz CPU's and 3 GB RAM).

My colleagues tell me they have tested and reproduced the
problems on several of their systems (to which I don't have
access).  This represents wide variations in CPU speed and
RAM.  I have reproduced it on my development system which is
the most constrained of the lot.  I am not a Linux, X, or
UNIX guru, just a system programmer with a lot of
experience.  Does anyone recognize these symptoms, and if
so, do you have a suggested fix?

Problem 1:
=========
Applications launch but randomly (about 20% of the time) die
on starting.  I have seen Mozilla 1.4 do this.  Problem is
most pronounced with applications launched by a Java
"Application Launcher" written by one of my colleagues,
maybe because it's the most heavily used in our environment.
The applications being launched are not Java; they are
executables written in compiled languages like C, C++, or
FORTRAN and use X for their interfaces (sometimes display
only, sometimes interactive).

Problem 2:
=========
Applications launched by the Java Application Launcher can
be killed by the same launcher.  Every so often, killing one
will kill all the applications simultaneously (and the
Launcher).  When this happens, the desktop icons disappear
for a few seconds, then re-appear, and the Nautilus "File
Manager" magically opens on the desktop (just as if someone
had clicked the icon in the upper left of the desktop).