Evening all, my first post here & I've searched like a nutter, so apologies if this has been covered 50 times already. Bit of background, I'm pretty OK (3+ years messing) with Redhat based servers, no GUI, but a bit of a noob with anything that looks nice.

Have been trying to get my (Acer Aspire 9303) laptop running something penguin-flavoured to fully exorcise the copy of Vista it came with, & seem to be having exactly the same problem with every version I've tried except Ubuntu (Feisty). As soon as I get the NVidia drivers installed & try messing with Beryl/Compiz effects (or sometimes as soon as I turn compositing on in xorg.conf & restart) it'll just hang when I try something, no nothing, not even the numlock key responds. It'll sometimes take a few minutes, sometimes a few seconds.

I've tried every readme I've found on xorg.conf setup, so much stuff has been tried that I can't remember, but basically messing with everything I can in there to try & get the thing stable. I've tried (deep breath)...

Fedora Core 6
Fedora 7
CentOS 4.4
CentOS 5
Debian
Sidux
Ubuntu (Gutsy)
Ubuntu (Feisty)

with exactly the same results with all except Feisty. I've also tried drivers from about every source you can, ie (the 2) different yum repositories for Fedora/CentOS & from NV's source, also Module Assistant approach where appropriate with Debian/Sidux. I'm especially curious about Gutsy, as I was kinda hoping, with Feisty being good, that I'd have a winner (I want Compiz-fusion!!)

Now I've found a way of getting Compiz on Feisty I'm thinking about going that way, but it's really bugging me, does anyone have any ideas?

I'm that much of a noob with these things that I'm not even sure where to look for post-mortem log-trawling, not that I can post anything useful from logs as it's been re-installed, but any decent suggestions would make me reach for the DVD wallet again. I'd really prefer Fedora 7...

compiz is still beta.. nobody knows what happens.. I tried a lot of times. sometimes works, most of the time not. depends strongly on your hardware and configuration. I would skip it since it is only eyecandy. perhaps someone could help you with that problem but I made the experience that most of the tips did not help or only for a while. so be aware of that. hope it works for you. but as we all know from vista, who need aero?*g

Aw, but I want a pimped up penguin!

Didn't realise it was still beta, thanks for the warning. I'd been trying to get it working since Beryl disappeared from the Debian package list through Synaptic.

Guess I'll be waiting a while then, pity...

**edit - now working using Feisty & compiz, anyone wanting to get compiz-fusion on Feisty check this out.