[PLUG] Poorer video performance on Ubuntu 10.04 than 8.04

[Richard C. Steffens]

I recently did a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.04 on my desktop machine. To 
test performance I ran Foobilliard. The balls moved in a jerky fashion. 
I installed the nVidia driver and Foobilliard works as smoothly as it 
did when I ran it on 8.04. Another test is http://www.jigzone.com. A few 
months ago it stopped working altogether on Firefox and Ubuntu 8.04. It 
now runs, but dragging the jig saw puzzle pieces is not smooth. It is 
smooth on my XP laptop running the same version of Firefox (version 3.6.12).

I'm assuming there is something different between 10.04 and 8.04 that is 
causing the problem, but have no idea where to start looking. Here are 
the specs for the two machines as reported by Ubuntu System Monitor and 
XP System Properties:

                     Desktop                            Acer Aspire 
1640Z Laptop
Processor    AMD Athlon XP 2100+    Intel Pentium(R)M 1.70GHz
Memory       1002.4 MiB                      0.99 GB of RAM
Video            GeForce2 MX/MX 400    Mobile Intel 915GM/GMS, 910GML 
Express Chipset Family

Any ideas where to look? Or is this a case of 10.04 pushing the limits 
of, what is now, an "older" machine?

-- 
Regards,

Dick Steffens