I use JME Desktop in my code and JButtons, which appear fine on my Windows XP machine but the buttons do not appear visible on Linux. They are there, and i can click them as i know their position but i cant not see them.
The same problem occurs with the jmetest.awt.swingui.HellojMEDesktop.java example on the CVS. No visible button.
Ive managed to fix the problem by recompiling my kernel to get Direct Rendering working. Not sure how that effected swing in jME but it works now anyway. 
Interesting… Good information though for others who might run across the same issue.