There have been a couple other posts relating to this and I think I
finally found a way to make things work on my machine, described below.
It's a hack but it does let things work.

I found this solution for I discovered that in the 3.0.1 I could start
Stage w/o a world file and load it using the menu. It appears to be
some form of startup/race condition.

The quick solution requires one additional line changed in
libstage/main.cc This is not a proper fix but I hope it will get people
running in the mean time.
_
Against the 2.x version _

Index: libstage/main.cc

--- libstage/main.cc (revision 7126)
+++ libstage/main.cc (working copy)
@@ -50,7 +50,8 @@
Stg::Init( &argc, &argv );

StgWorld* world = usegui ? new StgWorldGui(800, 700, argv[0]) : new
StgWorld();
-
+
+ world->Update();
world->Load( argv[argc-1] );

while( ! world->TestQuit() )

_
Against 3.0.1 version of stage_
--- libstage/main.cc 2008-07-30 11:21:47.000000000 -0700
+++ ../main.cc 2009-02-02 15:03:25.000000000 -0800
@@ -58,6 +58,7 @@
{
const char* worldfilename = argv[optindex];
StgWorld* world = ( usegui ? new StgWorldGui( 400, 300,
worldfilename ) : new StgWorld( worldfilename ) );
+ world->UpdateAll();
world->Load( worldfilename );
loaded_world_file = true;
}

Good luck,
Tully

Also need to reduce the initial stage window size when launched from a driver on my system to avoid startup segfault under hardy.

I think these should all be fixed in trunk now