Comment 12 for bug 180716

HOW TO MAKE COMPIZ WORK IN UBUNTU HARDY
  Pentium4/older NVIDIA card in test case
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  You need to have the proprietary driver for your video card installed, but restricted drivers manager does NOT work in Hardy as shipped because there is NO xorg.conf file by default! Therefore, you must invoke a program
which will generate this file. X11 will use it once written but no longer depends on it to boot. We are going to use "Screens and Graphics" from the
Admin menu for this purpose.

1: make SURE you have a root password enabled in case you have to boot
   into recovery mode. While the version of Hardy I have goes into recovery
   mode without a root password, I do not know if ALL versions will
   retain this feature, which compromises security for safety.

2: Install the proprietary driver packages for your video card.

3: go to "system" in the main menu

4: select Administration/Screens and Graphics

5: Stay on the screen tab(NOT the driver tab)

6: Change the screen resolution (to anything)and activate the "test" button-
   it will fail the configuration test,so don't close or shut down anything
   now!

7: Change your screen resolution back to where it was and test again-it will
   now pass the test-and /etc/X11/org.conf has now been generated for your
   default condition.

8: You can now use the restricted drivers manager in the normal way-enable
   the proprietary driver and restart your machine.

9: Go to appearances and enable desktop effects-Gandalf is back!

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   IF YOU SCREW UP AND YOUR MACHINE WON'T BOOT INTO X11:

 Boot into recovery mode(single) and delete /etc/X11/xorg.conf ! That's right-you can just DELETE this file, and Hardy's version of x11 will boot just fine, using your open-source drivers and allowing you to start over.

 Hardy Heron has a great new safety feature, though it is the reason for the driver/compiz problem as shipped-X11q no longer needs that x11.org.conf file to start! Still needs to to run prorietary driversa, but not to run open-source drivers.

With so many operating systems in older distros getting killed by screwed-up xorg.conf files that users don't know how to fix, getting a "default boot" from x11 without it is a key step towards making Ubuntu as end-user friendly as Windoze and those other corporate systems people learned on. Better to have trouble with Compiz and games than with the entire GUI!

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 TODO:

  Whoever is managing the restricted drivers manager package needs to add code to automatically generate /etc/X11/xorg.conf when the program is first invoked, just as "screens and graphics" already does.