Comment 40 for bug 218070

Had same problem, no right click on desktop, no icons showing.
Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic
I erased ~/.compiz and ~/.gconf/app/compiz
Did not fixed.
I'm not sure if deleting those directories helped fix the problem.
But procedure after doing that, did.

gtweakui Nautilus: Deactivate an activate "Use nautilus to draw desktop"

Open Gnome Config Editor (gconf-editor)
app/gnome-session/options
Set : auto_save_session

Closed session, log in again and now desktop shows correctly, I deactivated the auto_save_session after
and still works, so I guess it can be set all the time or not after the session has been saved with the correct values.