Adding NVidia Drivers

I've got a big bogged down with other stuff at teh moment. Today I had a chance to breakout and install those wonderful NVidia drivers into my setup. It you have a TNT2 GForce 5200/256, you might as well use it!!

Since NVidia drivers are licensed, you must use an installer outside of the Synaptic Manager to add them . To install you download the driver then type:-

sudo nvidia-glx-config enable

Then as if by magic you have a shiny new display. There are two commands that I always forget when playing around with Display Resolutions, but are handy to know;

cntl+alt++ switches between your stored resolutions
cntl+alt+bckspace reloads your X server.

Moving my mail and Firefox Plugins

The decision as to which mail client you use is a matter of personal choice. Currently I use Mozilla Thunderbird with mail washer for mail at home and Lotus Notes for work. Under Linux there I have the opportunity to use a mail client with similar functionality to Notes. Evolution and Kontact both have similar environments, that integrate a mailtool, calendar and todo list. Since I am using Ubuntu which uses a Gnome desktop as default I have decided to stick with Evolution. I am told that it using spam assassin as a spam filter. I guess I will have to start the mail learning process from scratch.

I have also discovered that, the plugin installer within Firefox does not work for some of the more common plugins you would wish to load. By default, if a plugin is not available within Firefox, a hand icon is displayed. This links to a process to install the plugin. When I have tried this process with Java and RealPlayer 10 it has complted but the plugin is not loaded. I will need to do a little web scanning for some clues to this one.

Ubuntu Expert Mode install

I have discovered that the expert mode install actually means you need to be an expert to fix the bugs in it, as opposed to being an expert at installing Linux. After I completed the install and logged in as a non-priviledged user I found that a number of tools, including synaptic package installer did not work. I checked that apt-get upgrade from a root account worked ok.

I quick check in bugzilla located that the expert install has more holes in it than Sonny's car did in the Godfather. See bug 9832 for the specific bug I hit. The answer was to add the un-privilledged user to the /etc/sudoers file manually.


After I had made the changes, all the tools that required root have started working. Lesson of the day

• Don't use expert mode to install Ubuntu!!

One of my other bugbears with the system is now amended. The desktop now has a lovely penguin in a scarf, playing the the snow background. This has replaced the cold coffee default screen background.