Comment 125 for bug 728745

I'll report my findings after upgrading Maverick Meerkat to Natty in the past two days in case it helps.

My graphics card is:

lspci -nn | grep VGA
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: nVidia Corporation G71 [GeForce 7300 GS] [10de:01df] (rev a1)

Currently "lspci -v" reports:

<snip>
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G71 [GeForce 7300 GS] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
 Subsystem: XFX Pine Group Inc. Device 2207
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
 Memory at fc000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
 Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
 Memory at fb000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
 [virtual] Expansion ROM at fd7e0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: nvidia
 Kernel modules: nvidia-173, nvidia-current, nouveau, nvidiafb
<snip>

On first boot I went in to Unity with a frozen screen with no usable virtual terminals. So my video card is *not being blacklisted*. By forcing a re-start of my computer I could start Ubuntu Classic /Gnome and change my video driver.

I've chosen in "Additional Drivers" NVIDIA (version 173). After a re-boot it is shown as activated but not currently in use. It is also saying that no proprietary drivers are in use on this system.

From: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=9028144&postcount=24 it says that Ubuntu showing the driver as activated but not in use is a known issue.

My boot screen and virtual terminals were still unreadable. I changed them as per:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia
via Startup-Manager
from
Resolution: 640x480 to 1024x768
Color depth: 8 bits to 24 bits

Under advanced I also changed the Bootloader menu resolution to 1024x768.

In the misc section: Show boot splash is unchecked and Show text during boot is checked - this does not seem to be true as I see no text and do get a basic splash screen.

My computer works reasonably now but if I use a virtual terminal (which does now work) e.g. tty1 (CTRL-ALT-F1, BTW It's CTRL-ALT-F7 to get back) I get artefacts on my screen and I need to force a screen re-draw e.g. ALT-TAB to a maximized app.

I guess for an easier life I need to buy a newer card going forward with Unity!