Comment 341 for bug 668415

This relates to lack of hardware compositing/3D effects on older hardware .. I'm still using an ancient GeForce 5200 card (motherboard just refuses to quit). Shade/fade effects in 14.04 are exceedingly slow because I am assuming rendering is being done in software w/nouveau. With the nVidia binary drivers login works but the desktop never appears..

 I stumbled on to the suggestion of installing "Gnome Flashback" w/metacity in another forum.

( http://askubuntu.com/questions/450555/very-slow-graphics-performance-after-upgrade-12-04-14-04 )

 I wass pleasantly surprised to see the "old" gmome desktop restored, plus all of the benefits of the software from the new release. I will recommend this transition to anyone who is holding on to using old hardware.

Workaround for old menus:

"sudo apt-get install gnome-panel"

Log out and choose "Gnome (metacity)" as the session type for the next log in

..FYI for good measure I had also removed a lot of the preference (.) files from my profile before I started the new window manager.

Once I was running metacity I then installed the v173 nVidia binary drivers and am now back in business..another computer saved from landfill, plus a possible workaround for many old Windows XP computers that would otherwise get trashed. Thanks!