Comment 80 for bug 861268

This problem is reproducible with programs that link against libtinfo (from ncurses), like gnome-terminal, xterm or gvim, but it is not reproducible with programs that don't, like konsole.

It's assigned here to compiz, probably because changing some compiz settings makes it sometimes go away, or because it's been reported that newer versions of compiz fix this issue. However, I can reproduce it in cinnamon, and it's been reported to be reproducible in KDE, so it's likely not really compiz's fault.

My guess is that it is an issue in the interaction of ncurses with an OpenGL composite window manager (be it compiz, mutter, or whatever KDE uses).

I can reproduce with nvidia cards, and people have been reproducing it with radeon cards, so it also looks like it's not a specific xdriver issue.