Ive got an old Compaq desktop that Im trying to set up to be a network share and server. Ive got Ubuntu on here. Im trying to find the driver for the video card to get rid of the Mesa acceleration because it sucks. So, Ive tried all of the drivers from the ATI site, but none of them work, they all say illegal instruction after inputing the mouse information, which probably means they arent the right driver. A little research pointed me towards the DRI project here:
http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/Building
So, Ive decided that I need to compile X.org and a bunch of other of stuff. The key is, whenever I enter the CVS commands in the terminal, it tells me that the command for cvs isnt found? A little help please?

install cvs, altough you probably already have a version of x.org all you have to do is get the right config file set up. It should be /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

Yep, I know that, but I dont have the ATI drivers, because I cant get any of them to install. The link I provided is talking about rebuilding X from cvs, and I can do anything with CVS from the console. I cant just change my xorg.conf if I dont have the driver for the card.

wierd, in debian you have all those dri drivers and just have to edit the xorg.conf and change it from vesa to the right module or run a little wizard that does the xorg.conf based on some parameters you input. If it says CVS command it means you must not have it installed, just install it and it should work. You could also try to find a snapshot as a tarball or gzip and use that.

Ok, Im new to this Ubuntu thing (or Debian, because thats what its based on), so how do I go about finding which driver it uses, or running the wizard? How do I install the CVS too? Im fairly used to Mandrake, so this is definitely a learning experience. I feel like a n00b again

should install cvs for you. You might want to read up on some apt guides and such to familiarize yourself with apt, since debian and most debian based distributions abuse it alot. THe best way to get X working is to run (or xserver-xfree86 depending on what ubuntu provides). Altough you can manually edit it with any editor you enjoy at /etc/X11/xorg.conf or /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 again depending on version.

Ok, Ill start googling some guides on apt. X is already running, I just want to get the acceleration enabled so everything isnt so choppy. Do I still need to do the x-server-xorg reconfigure? Im not really sure what driver this uses, but from what Ive read, its the Mach64 driver. This card is ancient.

i havent worked much in x, but try googling www.google.com/linux for some string like "debian xserver config xorg.conf" alot of guides.