Dear Ivan ! Late in the night, I just couldn't withstand the joke ! I know it's a nasty one. Sorry.
Beside that impudent workaround, I've got no idea. If it's possibly a problem with Gnome, you might check with KDE or windowmanager solely. If it's a failure from X, it would be useful to post your xlog here. Let us know what happens ! Good luck - -- micha.
