[DC LoCo] Dis-Unity: An Update On My Adventures in Getting Unity to Work.

[Brady Merriweather]

http://www.webupd8.org/2010/06/how-to-install-nvidia-25635-display.html

Try the PPA

Brady Merriweather 
http://www.about.me/Merriweather 

On May 11, 2011, at 12:38 AM, Michael Haney <thezorch at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ok.  The proprietary Nvidia drivers will NOT allow me to use Unity at
> all.  I reinstalled Natty, the 174 drivers were installed by default,
> and the Unity desktop comes up blank with just the wallpaper.  The top
> bar and dock do not appear, and the right-click menu comes up for just
> a second then vanishes.  I have to manually shutdown the machine and
> restart.  I can get into the Ubuntu Classic desktop just fine and its
> 3D accelerated using Compiz.
> 
> I went into Synaptic to see if there were other drivers.  I saw a 180
> driver, so I downloaded that and after it was done went into
> Additional Drivers and below the 174 drivers was a listing for
> Nvidia-Current, and the Experimental Open-Source 3D drivers.  The
> Nvidia-Current have the exact same issue as the 174 drivers.  The
> Ubuntu boot splash screen is white and corrupted, and Unity will not
> display correctly.  Just shows the wallpaper, but the Ubuntu Classic
> desktop works fine but its not accelerated.  Additional Drivers says
> its installed but not in use.  I tried the experimental drivers next.
> The boot splash screen seems to look ok off and on in the few times I
> rebooted.
> 
> The key thing is I can now see the Unity UI, or at least part of it.
> I see the main top panel, and the Dock bar, but none of the icons in
> the Dock display.  Its just a dark bar there and when I move my mouse
> there I see the mouseover text telling me what is there.  Another
> thing I've noticed is that I don't have to muck with the xorg.conf
> file to make my monitor show the right resolution.  I can use 1024x768
> with the experimental 3D drivers working.
> 
> With the experimental drivers I also have full Compiz desktop
> compositing in the Ubuntu Classic UI.  I didn't have that with
> Nvidia's proprietary drivers.  So, hopefully by 11.10 these issues
> will have been ironed out and Unity will work correctly with the
> community developed Nvidia 3D drivers.  My graphics card is older, its
> a 8x AGP Nvidia Geforce FX 5600 w/256 DDR RAM.  The community 3D
> drivers are actually FASTER than the proprietary drivers I used in the
> past.  The Gnome UI and the entire Ubuntu Classic desktop in general
> seems much more responsive.  Chromium loads pages much faster than it
> did before and I don't have massive lag when scrolling through iGoogle
> and Gmail like before.  It seems whatever has been causing a lot of
> performance overhead in previous versions of Ubuntu is gone from
> Natty.
> 
> After poking around in Unity I decided to go and stick with the
> classic UI for now.  Not just because of the Dock, but because Unity
> needs work.  Its not easy to find the applications you want anymore.
> I like how Ubuntu does it in Gnome 2.x, where the app launchers are in
> a menu sorted by categories and easy to find.  Now you need to hunt
> for what your looking for in Unity or you need to know the name of the
> app your looking for to type it in.  Its a very counter-intuitive UI
> and I think it still needs some serious work.  Unity as a UI for
> newbies to Linux is NOT ready for prime time.  If anything it will
> turn them off of Ubuntu.
> 
> -- 
> Michael "TheZorch" Haney
> "The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking
> of morality by religion." ~ Arthur C. Clarke
> "The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and
> politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there is no place
> for it in the endeavor of science. " ~ Carl Sagan
> 
> Visit My Site:  http://sites.google.com/site/thezorch/home-1
> To Contact Me:
> http://sites.google.com/site/thezorch/home-1/zorch-central---contacts
> 
> Free Your PC from the Bondage of Windows http://www.ubuntu.com
> 
> -- 
> Ubuntu-us-dc mailing list
> Ubuntu-us-dc at lists.ubuntu.com
> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-us-dc