Comment 6 for bug 155101

I have a similar problem (current version of Hardy), which may be the same issue as here, only with gnome-terminal. If I save my gnome session, a terminal window in the upper left corner is taken to have a geometry "100x32+5+24", as found in the saved session file (~/.gnome2/session). The +5+24 corresponds to the width of the border and title bar. If I open up several terminals in rapid succession, with a script such as:

gnome-terminal --geometry 100x32+5+24 &
gnome-terminal --geometry 100x32+5+24 &
gnome-terminal --geometry 100x32+5+24 &
gnome-terminal --geometry 100x32+5+24 &
...

the windows will randomly be placed in the upper left or +5+24 from the upper left (except the first one always seems to be upper left). The randomness disappears if the Compiz "Window Decoration" option is turned off (so windows have no border/title bar): all windows are +5+24.

I suspect this is a timing issue between placing the window and adding the border/title bar. Adding a border to an existing window seems to shift the window to maintain the position of the corner, but I do not think there is any shift if the border already exists when the window is placed. So it seems the final position is going to depend upon which action is performed first: placing the window or adding the border. Maybe the order of those events is not fixed? (This is only a guess at what is going on. I don't know much about the internals of Gnome and Compiz.)

More details here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=894503

I don't know if this is the same problem as the one Danny Baumann links to.