hi,

i'm about to move from mandrake 10.1 to ubuntu and i'm still a relative newbie so be patient...

i've been using Man 10.1 for about 3 months and, while it's been fine for an introduction to linux and has let me do important uni work at home without having to learn too much new stuff, i now want to move to a less buggy distro where usb 2 is much happier.

one of the major issues i had with mandrake was the nightmare i had installing the driver for the my nvidia geforce 4 graphics card. i booted off the ubuntu live cd this morning and everything went far, far more smoothly than i might ever had hoped. i didn't have time to fiddle about much with the graphics but it didn't look like the card had been automatically detected/installed, which i can imagine isn't that surprising.

can anyone tell me whether i'll have the same kind of experience sorting this out in ubuntu as i did in mandrake? provided there's plenty of info on what to do, i'll be fine if it's just as bad but i'll obviously need pointing in that direction...

thanks.

an nvidia install shouldn't have been a hassle on MDK to begin with.ubuntu(and 99% of other distros) will love the nvidia card.

are you kidding? after doing some research into it, i found out that that's actually a common problem for my video card under mandrake. i actually ended up having to edit the kernel (not alot but still a hassle considering it was my first-full on linux experience) to get it to run.

i could check it out again and tell you what i had to do but i'm going ahead with ubuntu anyway. can't be any worse than that was...

thanks though

The nvidia drivers were a nightmare to install on most distros using the 2.6.x kernel because the kernel people kept making so many changes that stopped the nvidia drivers from installing on most drivers unless they were patched. If you try the current drivers they should work fine on Mandrake and on Ubuntu.

I have the dreaded GeForce mx440 Nvidia card and have had endless trouble getting Nvidia to work with Debian Sarge with this card. So much so I had to recompile a kernel and remove all video modules just to get it to work consistently. Out of interest I installed Ubuntu/Kubuntu to give it a whirl. To install Nvidia, it was as easy as clicking on nvidia-glx in Synaptic, install, then reboot.

I then upgraded the kernel via synaptic, and when I rebooted into the new kernel..............automatically Nvidia must have realigned it's TLS links and ****WALLA**** I have Nvidia loaded.

Talk about easy!!!!

Check this out.

I used the Synaptic Package Manager under System/Administration in the default gnome window manger on hoary ubuntu.

yeah, i've now moved onto ubuntu and, unlike in mandrake where i had to rename various bits and pieces of my X config file, it's as easy as cutting and pasting:

'sudo nvidia-glx-config enable'

to the command line. no need to even download that blasted driver from the nvidia site in the first place.

A familiar theme.
Frustration w/ MDK propted a move to Ubuntu. Bliss and an FX5200 that seems to work.
Question: how do I test my card to start the fine tuning process?

hmm, i don't know. i'd sure like to though...

i'll have a look about on the ubuntu website, it's usually pretty helpful.

$ glxgears

oh yeah, i remember now. i did that in mandrake. couldn't remember what the command was though.

incidentally, it runs *alot* more smoothly in ubuntu... let the revolution begin!

What are you scoring? I get about 4700-4900 but the gears don't really turn. They sorta stutter along. Anyone know why? This is with a FX5600 Ultra.

weird. i get about 9000 and really smooth motion with a geforce 4 mx 440 agp 8x.

have you definitely got the drivers installed and enabled? what did you do to enable it?

...i should mention that's on the default size it comes up with. drops to around 900 when i put it full screen but still extremely smooth motion.

Used apt to get drivers, then "sudo nvidia-glx-config enable". I scored the same with the manually installed nvidia driver under Debian, but the gears turned smoothly. Doom3 ran fine at about 20-25 fps. Don't know why there is such a difference in our scores...

Hmm..just figured out that the gears will turn smoothly if I enable AA.??? Score drops but gears run smooth, so it would seem that my score and the speed of the gears are independent of each other????