*n*x

I have a dual-cpu Sun W2100z workstation I really like. It’s getting rather old, but it’s pretty fast for things like programming and Internet use. Until the release of Ubuntu 9.04, the machne was running fine. After installing the new release it was pretty obvious that the X performance was terrible. Things like glxgears ran fine on this dual screen setup, but things like switching virtual desktops (I use the shortcut ctrl+alt+arrows a lot) took a few seconds when windows were maximized. Sadly, the free driver didn’t work with the 3300 x 1050 resolution I use.

After playing around with the millions switch and config options of the nvidia driver, I found a working setting:

nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=2

To enable this permanently, you can add it to System – Preferences – Startup Applications:

(put “nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=2″ (without “”) in the command field).