Ubuntu 8.10 query
 

My 'experimental' old knackered laptop is a HP Easyone silver combo and I have installed Ubuntu 8.10 on it. I cannot set the desktop to normal viewing (eye candy) and can only have it set to basic. I presume this is because I have no Graphics card drivers installed. When I go to Hardware drivers>search it says there are no proprietary drivers in use. I believe my graphics card in it is an SiS 630s and I| have downloaded the driver for it. I now have a tdz file on my desktop from which I have extracted the driver icon. I dont know how to actually install it though - Doh!

Can anybody help please?

1) If you have X-Windows (the graphical interface) working at all, then you have a graphics driver loaded - that's what gives you graphics in the first place. Are you asking about the "Compiz" stuff that appears under Preferences - Appearance, the Visual Effects tab? That is not going to work on all hardware, especially old hardware, since it requires 3D graphics support in hardware. It's a luxury, not a requirement, and on a slow laptop you're probably better off without it.

2) That driver you downloaded - is that in a TGZ file rather than TDZ? If so, that's like a ZIP file: just a container for files. Extract the whole thing to a directory have a look inside for instructions, such as a README or INSTALL file. You'd probably need run scripts on the command line as root, which you'd use the sudo command for.

But is it definitely a current 3D driver for that hardware? I don't know that chipset specifically, and I'm struggling to find any details on it, even from SiS themselves. (There was a SiS 340, but no 430). X-Windows has undergone some major changes over the last couple of years, and there's a real risk that X-Windows could just stop working if it's not the right driver, or too old. (Linux is not as friendly as Windows in that area.) If that was my system, I would want to know that installing a new graphics driver would make a real difference, before I risked it.

Yes it's the visual effects I'm after. The laptop is nearly 10 years old though so it's probably incapable of running anything gucci.

Yes, the file is a tgz file. I'm not yet familiar with console commands though. It is extracted onto the desktop but there is no readme file or anything included.

OK, so can you pass me the link to that driver you downloaded, so I can take a look myself? Until I do, I'll have no idea what you have actually downloaded there. Like I said, TGZ is just the package: like ZIP, that tells me nothing about what's inside.

Here is the link

http://www.sis.com/download/download_step1.php

The driver is the SiS 630s
The icon now displayed on desktop is labelled XSiS_SVGA

Thankyou

Apologies, I originally posted SiS 430 instead of 630s

Well, it's some kind of binary installer program that you would just run, like an EXE file, as root. However, it dates from 2002, and has who-knows-what requirements. If you want to chance it, run sudo ~/Desktop/XSiS_SVGA - but I think that would fail, or worse. I would just drop the idea.

Thanks, whats the worst case scenario if it goes tits up?

A typical result you get from futzing around with X-Windows graphics drivers is no graphics at all. Cryptic message on boot such as "viewport not found", and a text login prompt. You can fix it if you know what you're doing, otherwise the best fix is a total reinstall. The more likely result, if you run that program, is that it looks for some other bit, can't find it, and says "no can do".

Ooer...think i'll give it a miss then. Thanks for the help anway:ok: