The less seems to "remember" its contents from the previous runs when used in a gnome-terminal. This effect can simply be reproduced by echo 1 | less (press q) echo 2 | less (press q) echo 3 | less In a regular xterm, this does not happen. Don't know who of the two is responsible for that behaviour. Yours, Martin Schulz
Seems to be a gnome-terminal bug. Works on ttys, in xterm, konsole and kvt.
I can't reproduce this problem with latest CVS GNOME, and Matt stopped complaining about it a while ago, so I am assuming it is fixed in the upcoming GNOME errata (stay tuned for these). If you want a fix "now" you can get the October GNOME packages via http://www.gnome.org/start/