Comment 6 for bug 231347

I may have a clue but I'm not sure of what to do.

With the new user, when I set preferences of the Gnome workspaces applet, I have two option : set rows and set columns. With my regular account, I have completely different options. I think it might come from the Compiz configurator (compizconfig-settings-manager package).
As far as I remember, Compiz doesn't manage workspaces like Metacity : instead of setting 4 workspaces, it sets 4 desktops with 1 workspace each, which would explain why AWN doesn't spread to the others (they don't exist).
In CCSM, there is only 1 workspace set indeed (and the number can't be changed as the option is greyed out).
I think CCSM (or something else related to Compiz) has trashed GConf options and made Gnome use its way of handling multiple workspaces even when using another window manager.
But I don't know where to check in Gconf for these options. In Apps -> Metacity -> General, num_workspaces is set to 4 as expected.