Are you sure you're using 0.9-9?

If so, then please share these infos:
what theme you're using?
what language?
what font you're trying to set and what size?

About desktop staying empty; it's something that just happens sometimes. You can kick it alive from terminal with this command:
dsmetool -t /usr/bin/hildon-home

No widgets should get lost if you start the hildon-home with above command.