Are you sure you are using Ubuntu? If you are and you know what you are doing then the interface - not the command line but the interface for restricted packages is point and click. I had no trouble letting Ubuntu pull the latest driver for my Nvidia card. Hell, I have an Epson Artisan 800 All in One and Ubuntu even pulled a driver that works great...even though Epson makes no driver for Ubuntu.

No it's not. The latest package Ubuntu offered (in 8.10, I have yet to upgrade to 9 - but now my system works, and you know how that goes "Never change a working system") - anyway - where was I - ah - yeah, the latest package Ubuntu offered was a couple of version behind the latest NVidia driver. 470 or 710 or so (need to look that up) should have supported the 9600 already, but somehow that always crashed with my board. This situation did not improve with the latest one available within Ubuntu. However, I managed to download and run the latest version from NVidia. But that damn Ubuntu felt the need to switch back to what it knows after a reboot. After 2 days wading through docs and web sites I came across some hints, which explains a manual install. And that requires to remove all nvidia specific drivers, incl. restricted modules, then download kernel sources, and install the NVidia driver. After that, an automated update through Ubuntu will not work anymore, and its your responsibility to keep up to date with the driver - guess 9 will break my X again. And I have to start over again. That's a great experience... :) If you are a masochist.

That's more of an upstream problem than an ubuntu problem. Nvidia could have easily packaged their driver in a .deb package that you can double click and get everything working, but obviously they're not investing anything in that, so if you have concern about that please go to the Nvidia headquarters and flame them off for not supporting your operating system of choice.

Ju, download 9.04 on a bootable CDROM and try it. Then you can install it if you like. Just be prepared to be overwhelmed in a good way. All of those old issues like the one you are having are gone.

I understand your hesitancy but rest assured 9.04 is a quantum leap.

Download just finished. I'll do the live CD first before I do an upgrade.

@verb3k: Whatever it is. It just sucks that way.

All the driver problems are not really the operating systems fault, operating system handles installing those drivers and using those drivers, but if they are not available its not because of ubuntu its because of the developer of driver hasnt yet made drivers for it on linux.

I could only see how well would drivers work on Windows if it didnt have the support of nvidia and ati :)

I've finally decided to give it a go on my main machine. I had 8.10 running for a while on an old P4 laptop. Worked like a charm, love the enhanced GFX effects (wobbly window, minimise animations etc).

The most suprising thing with Ubuntu is how it works so well on old hardware. Also, updates are so seamless! try installing XP nowadays and then spend 2 hours messing around downloading updates, then restart and download more updates. I think you have to go through 3 or 4 restarts to get SP3 and all the updates. With Ubuntu, it just downloads and installs the updates and off you go.

I also like how drivers are loaded on automatically and the inbuilt drivers tend to work brilliantly (apart from some newer GFX cards). Much better than Microsofts "generic" drivers. And if it cant load a driver it searches for one for you.

Most of the software available is also ready to go, just select the programs you want with a check mark and the system downloads and installs what you want... don't like it anymore or want to swap to another: - uncheck box and click update.

Web browsing is the most amazing in Ubuntu. Firefox is lightning!

Cant wait to try 9.04

blah blah etc... Point? Ubuntu is good and very user friendly. Anyone dissing it (menoyou) need to actually try it. Sure it has some issues here and there with certain hardware (mainly GFX cards) but like has been said, its not Ubuntu, its the hardware vendor not supporting hardware in linux well.

9.04 didn't change a thing for me. Same problem. Live CD just gets stuck when it tries to load the X drivers.

Linux needs a new graphics card driver model. That is so overdue but nobody wants to touch it because all "business" linux apps don't care and are so dependent on the X server(s).

No, I think DRI needs to move into the kernel, the fbdev (or console or what) and an X-wrapper needs to sit on top of it. The DRI interface needs to be extended to a transparent graphics driver model and third party drivers should simply be plugins (binary!) without the need to configure X at all.

X is the achilles heel. If they want to make this a "user land" OS, they need to address this at some point. Text based heritage is undeniable, but so out of place in the 21st century!

Oh boy. Need to add another line. That damn 9.04 made things even worse for me. On the second machine, the live CD ran fine. But then, same thing, X starts, screen is blank. That is after a fresh install on a Radeon X4350 or something / Core Duo. Now, console works. But WTH did they remove the root login or the su command ? Well, the good thing is, my WiFi works now on my 3rd machine, which wasn't working before. But, what, no root (yeah, sudo, I know), and I need to configure my WiFi thru the console now to get some updates to my system ??? Oh, no, not quiet there yet, IMO...sorry for my rant. It is and remains Linux after all. They even cleared out the xconfig. If you do that, please do it right...the next time.