X failure after upgrade to Meerkat (Ubuntu 10.10)

[Bruce Labitt]

  On 10/19/2010 8:02 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen wrote:
> bruce.labitt at autoliv.com writes:
>> gnhlug-discuss-bounces at mail.gnhlug.org wrote on 10/19/2010 11:15:35 AM:
>>> On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 10:46 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen
>>> <rozzin at geekspace.com>  wrote:
>>>> Well, ATI/AMD&  Intel have both FOSS'd their drivers so that
>>>> the community can decide to pick them up and maintain them,
>>>> if need be, for as long as there's interest--possibly forever.
>>>    In practice, the FOSS world isn't usually much better at maintaining
>>> support for older hardware.  Unsurprisingly, old software that almost
>>> nobody uses doesn't have many hackers interested in maintaining it,
>>> either.
>> Which brings me back to my observation, that while linux is better, than
>> say windows, for 'legacy' platforms, there comes a time to retire the
>> beast, because, no one is supporting the drivers for key peripherals.  I
>> was surprised that, at least for me, the party was over - and abruptly at
>> that!
> Did you try xserver-xorg-video-nv? If neither that nor nouveau works,
> and if your `old' machine is old enough to still have PCI slots be
> acceptible for a graphics card, I could probably give you a 3dfx card
> that would still work....
>
> I haven't actually used it myself in a couple of years
> (which is like forever, in terms of Ubuntu releases),
> but the driver appears to sill be live:
>
>      http://packages.ubuntu.com/maverick/xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
>
> I also have an ATI Radeon 9250 (also PCI) which I'm pretty sure is
> still supported (by the FOSS drivers--dunno about the proprietary ones,
> I never found a reason to try them), and which I might be willing
> to part with, though I've been considering using it myself
> as a replacement for an old inbuilt card that seems to be acting up....
>
Sorry for this obvious question.  How does one change the 
active driver?  Just edit xorg.conf and put in nv?  What if 
there isn't an active xorg.conf?  I renamed it so it would 
not be used.  (What DOES X use if there is no xorg.conf?)

Does nv support the GeForce 2 MX/MX400?  That video card is 
listed by Nvidia now as legacy.

I may take you up on the video card offer.  Naturally I need 
to flail and froth about a bit before I give up!  Wouldn't 
be right without a little suffrin'

-Bruce