A few Questions

[Deomedes]

Hey guys,
I'm brand new to linux, infact the only reason i have it is because the guy that built my laptop put mint on it. I'm likin it so far, but i'm tryin to find out some information so here goes some questions, hopefully you guys can help me with them. My first question is when i first got my laptop I was able to look at some pretty cool screen savers that came with linux. however, at the time, i was unable to use compiz fuzion (still cant), and thought it was due to a driver issue, so i had the guy take a look at the laptop, and he installed an experimental driver, now i cannot do either the special desktop effects, (i'm assuming thats compiz fuzion) and i cannot see those cool screen savers any more. is there a specific driver i need? (total noob to computers.) How do i even see what video card i have in my machine? My last question relates to the first. I've been menu scrolling and found what looks like instructions on how to enable certain video effects, but its requireing key combinations and button presses, what are the buttons they are refering to (it says button 1, button 2, etc. in the options for advanced desktop effects.) If anyone out there can help me with these problems, i would greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much for your time

- Deomedes

[BlahBlah_X]

I don't fully understand your second question, but let me answer the first.

If your graphics card doesn't work with the effects right away and is relatively modern, it is probably an ATI or Nvidia card. These two companies refuse to give out drivers in open source (modifiable form), so most flavors of linux don't include them by default (linux is very pro open source and generally can't stand closed source/ un-modifiable software or drivers). Linux by default comes with open source supplements, which don't always work great, especially for advanced effects.

So, your guy might have installed some sort of driver that instead of helping, messed up your system further. Try using the program Envy in the menus to install the proper driver that will allow for advanced effects and screensavers and almost anything else.

[Deomedes]

envy isnt doing much, with either type, ( i tried both ati and radeon, neither worked) How do i check for sure what card i have?

[Boo]

I would guess that your laptop does not have an ati or nvidia graphics card, more likely an intel one.
I have a dell insperion 6000 with some intel graphics card and it runs compiz fine with no extra driver adding needed.

so what type/brand/model laptop is it?
if you open a terminal window , right click the desktop--> open terminal.
run this command:
lspci
and post the output here.
this will give a listing of all the hardware on your system connected to the PCI bus.

Boo

[Deomedes]

i think i found out what card i have, does {Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)} make any sense? if so what driver would be best to get the ball rolling?

[Boo]

i would think the default one would have been fine.
but there could be a better one out there. may have to google it.
quick look shows it uses the intel driver in the xorg.conf file.

so you can not use envy since it is not an nvidia or ati card.

like my laptop, leave the default video setup and just enable compiz.
you then can change the compiz settings to how you like or to fix some options.

Boo