Got my 3D back on my Gateway

If you're in Ubuntu, and upgrade from Intrepid to Lucid, you might find this problem that I had: No 3D Effects with Intel 945 graphics. Apparently, that's because Lucid thoughtfully installs nvidia drivers, which, until removed, usurp 3D capabilities of other processors, such as Intel's. I removed a few things labelled nvidia and got 3d working again. Yay!

Fixing the small screen on my laptop

My beloved Gateway MT6730 had one fatal flaw when converting to Ubuntu: The screen resolution.
It appears that the xrandr logic insisted I had a TV connected to my laptop and therefore would overlap two screens: one at 1024x768 which everything resized to, and one at my laptop's preferred resolution: 1280x800. It looks like this image. I'm certain if you're here, you know EXACTLY what this is.

From a command line, I found out I could do this: xrandr --output TV --off which kind of worked, except didn't survive reboots.

Here's the answer:
Edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add these lines:

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "TV"
Option "Ignore" "true"
EndSection

Exit and do a ctrl-alt-backspace to reload X, and you, like me, don't have to worry about this any more.

Also, the "Unknown" display disappeared from the gnome-display-properties, as well as it fixed the same issue with the logon screen.

Install RealTek 8187b on Ubuntu Hardy Heron

Update 10/12/2008: Don't bother with this. Get wicd to fight the fight with this card (and other wireless cards). Also, for this particular card, I gave up and replaced it with an Intel 4965AGN, which solved a host of issues. The N card is overkill, because it provides three antenna posts versus the two you get. As well, the native Ubuntu driver (BONUS!) doesn't indicate it's an "N". However I hooked up to antenna posts 1 and 3 and it worked fine enough -- as in, I got it to get on the web reliably. At $30, it was a minor extra purchase and worth it to increase the reliability of the WIFI adapter. Also, it worked better in Windows during suspend/resume. Windows users will probably want to get the Intel driver, which works perfectly fine, even if Intel warns that you should get the driver that comes with the PC...

Original post:

Of course it wasn't working when I started it up, I just got a Gateway MT6730 (Great deal on Buy.com)

Anyway:
Wired network connection helped.
Go to Realtek and download the driver.

In the gnome panel, System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager
Click Search
type in ndiswrapper
select for install ndiswrapper-utils-1.9

if you want, you can also choose the ndisgtk, but it shouldn't be necessary.
Click apply

From this website (It's in Italian) I got the rest of the information.

First, open a terminal, go to the download location (cd Desktop, likely?) and unzip RTL8187B_driver_only.zip
cd RTL8187B/Win98
sudo ndiswrapper -i net8187b.inf
sudo ndiswrapper -l
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
sudo ndiswrapper -m
sudo echo ndiswrapper >> /etc/modules


By now, you should be able to click on the network icon of the panel and see wireless networks.
You should be able to connect to the network of your choice.

Please let me know if this works for you, or doesn't. Or if you have hints to make this better.

ETA: added a line for ndiswrapper to load after reboot.
Edit 12/2/2008: Changed the link to Google Shopping for the card, because the original supplier was out of stock. I can't imagine that I was the only one to buy the last one.