Infrastructure Software

I'm a bit rusty, but I've used unix a good bit in the past. But never with x windows or gnome or graphics of any kind. I'm playing with Oracle Enterprise Linux as a guest OS inside VMWare Server on a Windows XP Host.

I have a non-root user account (oracle) that is using the Korn Shell. There is a ~/.profile file that sets the prompt, an alias or two, and exports some environment variables.

When I log directly into the server as oracle, and open up a terminal window, it does not run my .profile file, or at least it looks that way because the prompt is not set, the alias doesn't kick in, and only some (but interestingly, not all) of the environment variables are set.

However, if I then do:
su - oracle

Then the .profile is executed "fully", and all of the environment variables are set, alias set, prompt set, etc. Why isn't this happening the first time? Where would I look to investigate this issue? Is there a gnome terminal window profile file?