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What version of Ubuntu?

Have you run jockey-gtk? (don't know what it's called in the menu, but it might be "hardware drivers" or something along those lines. Otherwise just run it from a terminal).

Have you tried opening a terminal and running "compiz --replace". If that seems to work then it's an issue in the Appearance-settings.

Be sure to go in to "Software Sources" (System -> Administration -> Software Sources) and enable the first four out of five checkboxes on the first tab to get access to all the restricted software....

Also for fonts:

/usr/share/fonts

or, if installed in home directory:

/home/<USER>/.fonts (you can just create the .fonts folder if it doesn't exist already)

You can set is like gtk-icon-theme-name = "Bluecurve". Change Bluecurve to the name of the icon theme of your choosing (The name of the folder in ~/.icons)