Looked into my problem and responding here for others benefit. My problem was that I was using an Intel graphics PPA and when I upgraded to Karmic my Intel video driver was held back. When I deleted the PPA and reinstalled xserver-xorg-video-intel all problems were fixed and there was a noticeable improvement in hardware acceleration as well. Thanks all for your work
Looked into my problem and responding here for others benefit. My problem was that I was using an Intel graphics PPA and when I upgraded to Karmic my Intel video driver was held back. When I deleted the PPA and reinstalled xserver- xorg-video- intel all problems were fixed and there was a noticeable improvement in hardware acceleration as well. Thanks all for your work