The graphics card noob trick:

Envy is a nice tool which automatically detects your graphics card (ATI/AMD/Nvidia), then downloads+installs the newest driver from the ATI/Nvidia website and changes your config files to work with the driver. AND: Solves/works around the known issues with the driver.

These are the installation instructions for Ubuntu and Debian.
The tool runs with a GUI (from Applications→Administration→System Tools→Envy) or on the text console with ”sudo envy -t”. It also allows you to manually choose a driver version before installing.

I have an ATI card. I might have admitted that already.
The performance of this card (with fglrx) was so depressing that I had to do something. With the newest AMD Catalyst driver I got about 20-30% performance improvement compared with the original xorg-driver-fglrx shipped with Ubuntu 7.10.

Now I am using a driver that is not even packaged by Ubuntu - which makes it even blobbier than blob.
NEW! Sell your soul easily with the automated blob driver installation tool. I hope there will be open source drivers for my graphics card soon…

~~LINKBACK~~