Dapper Drake on Dell 9300

[nev_neo]

Hey guys,
I've been using Dapper for a coupla days now, on my secondary computer. This is a Dell Inspiron 9300, specs:
Pentium M 2 Ghz,
2 Gb ram,
nvidia geforce 6800 go,
60 gb 7200 rpm,
Sony DVD RW
17" trubrite.

I've used Hoary and Breezy on it before, but i've never had problems like this.
Let me just say that everything "just works". Tho most people would be happy with that, i'm kinda disappointed.
3D acceleration used to be MUCH better with the earlier 2 ubuntus.
now, its just plain laggy.
even when i'm in the terminal, i can actually feel the lag when i'm typing in the terminal.
I know i've installed the latest nvidia drivers, but i dont know if they're actually working.
I get about 3000~ fps in glxgears.
I thought if I used XGL, it would help some. Well it did, but not by that much, the lagg is still there.

Any help would be really appreciated.

[bigtrouble77]

Your video drivers are most definately not working correctly. I used to get 3000fps with my mobile Radeon 9700 (which is actually a 9600).

I don't understand how you could have an issue installing the drivers... Did you change the driver name to 'nvidia' from 'nv' in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf?

I can assure you that ubuntu and kubuntu are very responsive with nvidia cards. I have about 12 ubuntu machines running, some with nvidia opengl drivers, some without, but all of them perform very well. No delays or sluggishness. I had issues with breezy and hoary.

You may want to install the drivers via automatix (www.getautomatix.com)

[nev_neo]

ok...but i think i used EasyUbuntu when i was trying to install everything.
I could be that something went wrong during the install process. But things were laggy even before that.

[bigtrouble77]

I'm not sure how the easy ubuntu install works, but I'm pretty sure the automatix install will update your xorg.conf automatically. If you don't have the drivers set to use "nvidia" instead of "nv" they won't be used.

Do you have 'Nvidia Settings' in your System Tools? If you do then launch it and confirm that direct rendering is used and that the glx drivers are loaded. I have a feeling that you're only using the mesa drivers.

[nev_neo]

no i dont have nvidia settings in the system tools... and even when I do launch it from the console..its not the same.
I agree that mesa drivers are still being used.
Mebbe I should try to re-install Dapper. But I'd really hate to do that cuz it could still not work ...again :-(

[seablade]

Dont reinstall... first and foremost, post up your xorg.conf

Seablade

[abf]

yeah.....you just screwed up the install.....you should install the nvidia files from synaptic, change xorg.conf to nvidia and make sure dri is not loaded (i think...) and the mode 0666 is disabled...easy enough

[nev_neo]

ah well...i guess I screwed it up so much that even X wouldnt load.
well i've now dumped ubuntu and moved to a distro that i've actually worked with before.
I'm now using Fedora Core 5. I've been using RH based distros for a long time now, both on servers as well as desktops. decided to give RH's latest a shot.
so far so good, most everything worked outta the box, cept for the nvidia drivers and wireless. But that got fixed in a jiff.