Comment 5 for bug 437258

You must install the package 'upx-ucl'
'sudo apt-get install upx-ucl'
Navigate to the epsxe binary [/usr/local/bin/epsxe] and run:
'sudo upx -d epsxe'

The kernel will not crash upon running epsxe.

With the Karmic release, libgtk1.2 has been removed and it is not in the package manager. You must manually install it. I did this through the Ubuntu Package Website:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/dapper/libgtk1.2

Dependencies:
dpkg http://packages.ubuntu.com/dapper/dpkg
libc6 http://packages.ubuntu.com/dapper/libc6
libglib1.2 http://packages.ubuntu.com/dapper/libglib1.2
libgtk1.2-common http://packages.ubuntu.com/dapper/libgtk1.2-common
libx11-6 http://packages.ubuntu.com/dapper/libx11-6
libxext6 http://packages.ubuntu.com/dapper/libxext6
libxi6 http://packages.ubuntu.com/dapper/libxi6

Personally, I had to install libglib1.2 and libgtk1.2-common in order to satisfy the libgtk1.2 dependencies.

The kernel problem was solved after completing this process.
I did have one other problem. The link to 'epsxe' that was located in '/usr/local/bin/epsxe' would not load the plugins or configurations. I ended up navigating to '/usr/local/games/epsxe/' where all my plugins and configurations are located and ran:
'sudo upx -d epsxe'
I then created a launcher pointing at '/usr/local/games/epsxe/epsxe' Now my configurations load and the emulator is playable once again.