Solution Perspective Media Blog

If like me you're using the Beryl window manager for linux (extremely cool eye candy) and have misbehaving Java applications that don't show windows properly, the title bar draws but the rest is blank, then you'll need to employ the fix as detailed in several places on the net including Arch Linux Wiki - Beryl.

Basically add the following to your .bashrc file or /etc/profile (then restart X)

export AWT_TOOLKIT="MToolkit"

As I'm running on x86_64 I also had to install a 386 library (libXp) as well (as the Java in use was a 386 version) for the Java apps to work.