Comment 149 for bug 259385

Guy,

Ubuntu developers simply blacklist compiz on 8.10 Intrepid and don't start it on the affected processors. Same thing on 9.04 jaunty and 9.10 karmic. Compiz won't even start on the later ubuntu's for video drivers that don't support compiz.

The CD's for various releases are easy to download if you want to try them. Go to http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/cdimage/releases/ and take your pick. I find the later releases have more features and run better with some exceptions on some machines. karmic 9.10 is in process of development so it has lots of problems still. Maybe that's why I run it. The karmic A2 alpha 2 version of karmic isn't bad, A3 and A4 need a bunch of workarounds to function. karmic doesn't release until October so most bugs should be out by then.

By the way, compiz is "eye candy" and has nothing to do with internet, word processors, spreadhseets, digital pictures, email, ... compiz adds some inline graphics effects so it does slow down performance a bit.

What I did when booting CD on the levels that had trouble with compiz was boot in recovery mode, i.e. at grub boot menu, do F6 then replace "quiet splash" with "single" which boots in recovery mode. Then on the recovery mode menu root prompt selection (might have to down arrow for that selection) do apt-get remove compiz compiz-core. Then exit and resume.

On /etc/X11/xorg.conf, what the developers decided was the "default" was good for them so they decided not to put in an /etc/X11/xorg.conf for the rest of us who are having problems. I copy one in from another ubuntu. If you want to experiment, you could from the CD recovery mode root prompt:
nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Section "Device"
        Identifier "Configured Video Device"
        Driver "vesa"
EndSection
Ctrl-o
Ctrl-o
Ctrl-x
exit
resume boot

vesa is a default basic driver which on my pc's runs on i845, ati radeon mobility 7500, ati radeon Xpress 200, but not on intel i830.

Jerry