I use dual monitors with a static Guake terminal on one while doing everything else on the other. Guake will work for a seemingly random amount of time, and eventually disappear until I reboot or kill the process (which loses any open tabs).
I found a similar question, but it seems to be completely unrelated.
There's an even better workaround in that thread that lets you get the running guake back without restarting it, by mbondfusion:
1) Use xwininfo to find your root window ID
xwininfo -name 'Guake!' -int -tree
xwininfo: Window id: 60817461 "Guake!"
Root window id: 143 (the root window) (has no name)
Parent window id: 143 (the root window) (has no name)
1 child:
60817462 (has no name): () 1x1+-1+-1 +64+23
2) Use xdotool to reparent the Guake window:
xdotool search --name 'Guake!' windowreparent 143
The problem comes from the show desktop button which is a confirmed Guake bug. I never use the show desktop button from the sidebar, but realized later on that accidentally selecting show desktop while alt-tabbing is very easy to do (more so if you're unaccustomed to the alt-tab behavior brought about in 12.04).
I found a temporary fix as outlined by Stibbons by using "Hide on lose focus" in preferences. Keep in mind this will only prevent the alt-tabbing show desktop bug, and isn't ideal if you require a static terminal on a separate monitor. (I've disabled the sidebar button in settings > appearance > behavior - just in case!)
Stibbons said 19 days ago "I'll try to fix it asap," and as I was losing current tabs every few hours this temporary fix is HUGE timesaver.
My workaround for this problem is to disable the "Show Desktop" in the switcher with the unity tweak tool. It is easily installed with sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool
as explained in How can I remove "Show Desktop" from the Alt-Tab (application) switcher?.
guakefrom starting automatically and instead launch it from a terminal. Leave it running and when it crashes, copy any error messages and add it to your question. – terdon Mar 10 '14 at 01:27