How do I speed up video under Ubuntu 10.04? I’m not talking gaming, just basic YouTube tutorials. The video is so slow it’s useless, even playing FLV’s from the hard disk. The problem is not limited to FLV’s. WMV’s are even worse. The audio runs fine on both.
Card: EVGA GeForce4 MX4000 AGP (64MB)
Mobo: Soyo SY-P4VGA, 2.4GHz 1-core Celeron, 1.5GB DDR
Video: Aperture 256MB (also tried 64), Fast write, AGP Master wait states 0 (?)
Drivers: Nvidia 96.43.17 (also tried what Ubuntu originally installed)
Monitor: Sceptre X24WG
Resolution: 1152×864
Colors: 16.7 Million (I just tried reducing that to 65k and haven’t restarted.)
Things I am not interested in hearing:
(1) Update the drivers. As far as I know they are the latest. Got them from the Nvidia site. The version I have does not have a performance adjustment.
(2) Replace the video card. Performance is fine in Windows XP. This is a personal “backup” machine from spare parts. If the same hardware works fine under Windows, the difference should be a configuration problem, not hardware. Watching someone talk on camera surely doesn’t require high-performance video.
(3) Turn off fancy video effects. Tried it both ways. I have compiz installed but performance was about the same without it. I normally don’t use fancy effects.
(4) Switch Linux distros. I’m only learning the basics to install the desktop version as a server (mainly text documents) at a small office (12 employees). The video speed won’t matter for our office use and overall Ubuntu will fit well. I’d just like better video performance at home, although I’ll continue to use XP as my primary OS.
