It's usually good advice to wait a while before jumping into a new version of a Linux distribution. I should have taken it. I've had a number of problems on my laptop related to Emacs, and X. Even Sudoku has a regression, for Murphy's sake.
I solved one display problem related to OpenOffice.org and Network Manager by enabling display effects, and that brought on a whole new, but somewhat less obnoxious problem.
Apparently I'm not the only person to have problems upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10. Finally, this morning I had problems with the Launchpad servers apparently overloaded.
It would be comic if it weren't so pitiful.
My advice: stay away from Komic Koala for a while.