Only use these instructions if you are booting from the LiveCD, as I am. I have not installed Ubuntu on my hard drive and have no real experience with it.

I have an NVidia MX-4000 video card. This card requires the legacy nvidia closed-source drivers to enable compositing. The default open-source drivers won't let me set anything beyond System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Visual Effects -> None.

Start System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers. Apply the NVidia drivers offered. They will download and install to disk. They won't be used, however, without restarting X. Read on.

At this point you're prompted to reboot to use the drivers. Don't. Rebooting restarts the LiveCD and you lose your download. Simply close the Hardware Drivers window.

Start a Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal.

In 9.04 you could type 'sudo telinit 1' to restart the whole gdm/X system. This left me with a black screen in 9.10.

Instead, type 'sudo telinit 1 ; sudo telinit 2'. After a few seconds ( 5 or 10) you'll be dropped to a full-screen command line.

At that command line type 'sudo service gdm start'.

X will restart and you'll be dropped into whichever Gnome environment you were in last. Should be the desktop.

Start System -> Preferences -> Display. It should tell you that your drivers don't support Display, but offer to start the driver's configuration instead. You may do this to look around. I didn't change anything.

Start System -> Preferences -> Appearance. Click on the Visual Effects tab. Click the Extra radio button.

Enjoy creamy compositing goodness.

Hi Jamesf,

I read your note too late. i did reboot at the point where you indicated not to and now I ended up with only a command line interface. I am new to linux (ubuntu 9.10) so I definitely need some good advice here.
Can you give me a clue on how to get the nice gui back?

thanks.

oops forgot to mention
I have a nvidia Geforce 8500 GT video card an run ubuntu 9.10 32 bit.

My experience is only while running under the LiveCD, so whenever I made an error I simply turned off the machine and turned it back on, erasing all of my mistakes.

I do not have a spare machine with Ubuntu installed on the hard drive. I would think that you could just type 'sudo shutdown' and then turn the power on when it powered off, or 'sudo reboot' to reboot.

It sounds like you've already installed Ubuntu to your hard drive and are not booting from the LiveCD. If that is the case, and rebooting doesn't help, you should probably start another thread with your problem in the title. Long-time Ubuntu users would probably tell you exactly what I don't know.

EDIT - corrected nonsensical second sentence to start with "I do not have".

Indeed, I have installed ubuntu on my harddrive. I upgraded from 9.04. I'll have to open en new thread.
Thanks anyway