Partly as a note to self and partly as an effort to help someone else, go here:
http://vikram.eggwall.com/computers/nxt.html
for tips about getting bluetooth, usb, and nxc to work the NXT under Ubuntu 9.10.
It all worked well for me. I’ll likely be doing some of my own write-ups on Linux and the NXT robot, so if you’ve got questions… leave them.