Comment 2 for bug 246556

Hi kbit, thanks for using Ubuntu and thanks for taking the time to file this bug report! One thing that can sometimes cause differences between behavior at startup and otherwise is timing. However sometimes the terminal behaves differently as well. Let's figure out which it is:

First, try copy and pasting the same command into a run box such as Alt+F2. Does that behave the same as running from the terminal? If not, it doesn't have to do with startup. If it does behave the same, it might be a timing issue. Try putting something like "sleep 10 && cairo-clock -x 1000 -y 200 -w 127 -h 127 -s -t default -o -i -e" (without the quotes) into a cairoclock.sh file, chmod it a+x, put it in your home directory and run THAT instead of the command directly. This will wait 10 seconds for everything like compositing to start up, which might somehow cause an issue.

Let me know if either if these is a fix for you and we can figure out where the issue exists, thanks!