NVidia vs. Ubuntu
I’ve had a horrible time of trial and error getting my NVidia drivers running under Ubuntu. I’ll start by explaining the original setup, the problem, then get to what I did to fix.
Original Setup: Pentium 4 with the Riva TNT Pro64 32MB
The default install of Ubuntu detected my card and installed the nvidia-glx drivers which appeared to run as a legacy driver and didn’t perform well with the Compositing enabled. I decided to purchase a GeForce FX 5200 with 128MB assuming the extra horsepower would handle the Compositing without any issues.
The Problem: Upon install, I noticed the card performed even worse than the old card with each window redrawing itself very slowly when minimizing and maximizing. I downloaded the NVidia drivers from their website and installed them. The only true indication I could get that I did something right here was the NVidia splash screen that displayed just before starting X Windows. The NVidia Settings tool I found doesn’t seem to have any helpful tools for setting up the card, rather is more for fine tuning little features like Cursor Shadow.
What I Did: I searched the Internet (Google really) and found ways to check which driver was running and it showed AGPGART was running instead of the NVidia driver I had installed. I then added nvidia to the /etc/modules and blacklisted agpgart. I added modified my xorg.conf to have the following:
Section "Device"
Identifier "NV34 [GeForce FX 5200]"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "NoLogo" "true" # Disables nVidia's logo on start-up
Option "NvAGP" "0" # Tries internal nVidia AGP drivers first
Option "RenderAccel" "true" # Duh 
Option "CursorShadow" "true" # Adds an alpha-shadow to your cursor
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true" # Mostly used for cool effects
EndSection
When I had NvAGP set to 1, the gnome-panel (top and bottom bars) wouldn’t load, but setting it to 0 allowed them to load. I’m not completely sure the NVidia drivers loaded because the status I ran earlier only output AGP Disabled, but the screen rendering seems to be much better. I may post an update in the future once I have time to figure out what is happening here.
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