I needed to buy a new motherboard on the cheap side the other day. The board that I got has a VIA chipset on board. (Biostar P4M900-M7 SE Motherboard - v7.0) I was hoping to get 3D graphics going on my Ubuntu Linux box without having to buy a new PCIe video card. I finally got it all going. Here’s how:

The first step was to get the latest VIA driver for Ubuntu. Get the driver here.

You will need to extract the files from the tar file. Then run the installation script ./vinstall. Reboot and you should be running on the new via driver.

I could now run glxinfo and had Direct Rendering enabled. glxgears worked fine. However, I still could not enable the Desktop Effects under System/Preferences/Appearance/Visual Effects.

I came accros this script that runs various compiz checks.

Compiz-Check is a script to test if Compiz is able to run on your system/setup and if not, it will tell you the reason why.

Forlong’s Blog - Compiz-Check.

The script indicated the VIA driver was blacklisted. It offered to remove it from the blacklist which I did. Now all of the desktop effects work. Thank you Compiz-Check!

Wizard Boot Camp, Part Six: Daemons & Subshells | Linux Magazine

Let’s continue our discussion of Linux processes with a look at two unrelated concepts that are both good to understand. First we’ll write a simple daemon process and send signals to it. Then we’ll see how to suspend a child shell — which gives some insight into how shells cope with signals sent to them.

Desktop Linux for the masses. Who needs Windows anymore?
Hands on with Ubuntu 8.04 :: Linux Format :: The website of the UKs best-selling Linux magazine

Yes, the Hardy Heron is here This is the new Long Term Support LTS release of Ubuntu, and is possibly the most eagerly anticipated distro of all time. Read on for our hands-on look at the new features, with screenshots galore…

Here is a good article on processes and signals on a Unix/Linux system. This also shows why sending a ‘kill -9′ to terminate a normal process is a bad idea. It doesn’t give the process a chance to clean up after itself.

Wizard Boot Camp, Part Five: Control Processes Using Signals | Linux Magazine

This month we’ll dig into process control: signals sent to processes and how a shell handles processes, including some details on job control.