Comment 14 for bug 563161

I also had this problem after upgrading from 9.10 to 10.04, but what I did was to go to
System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Visual Effects
and change from None to Normal
This enabled desktop effects and window borders, i.e. everything was normal again. Then I went to
System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications -> Options
and clicked on "Remember Currently Running Applications"
and the settings were okay after next reboot.

I suppose this was equivalent to adding "compiz --replace" manually to startup applications.

My desktop was pretty much standard GNOME desktop and I have no idea whether I was running emerald or something else before the upgrade.

I also saw the missing /usr/bin/compiz.real entry in the syslog so the symlink would probably have worked for me too.