Looks a non-starter but trying to find a way to enable video acceleration in Ubuntu.

You can list the hardware you've got from the prompt via:

lspci -v | less

From that I know my chipset's an Intel GMA 965, Intel one's are better supported so might be possible....

Doing this tells me I have direct writing 3d support enabled,

glxinfo |grep direct

Fusion-Icon may help,

sudo aptitude install fusion-icon

Allows you to switch between different window decorators (compiz & metacity), plus change some of compiz's options.

Sorted

Found a way to improve it, in terminal type

gstreamer-properties

Hit enter, this'll popup a dialog to alter the audio and video properties of your linux distro.

From here click the video tab and change default to X Windows System (No Xv), hit test to be sure, should improve the video.

You can also manage and test your webcam from here ;-)

Open Terminal via Keyboard Shortcuts

Open System / Preferences / Keyboard Shortcuts

Now find the one called Run a Terminal

Click on the column opposite saying disabled and hit CTRL+ALT+T, then close the dialog

Now everytime you hit CTRL+ALT+T a terminal window will open.

Improve VLC + Keyboard Shortcuts

CTRL+CURSOR-UP  => increase volume
CTRL+CURSOR-DOWN  => decrease volume
SPACEBAR  => pause movie

Also don't install the XINE packages, GStreamer is much faster for video playback

sudo apt-get remove xine
sudo apt-get autoremove

Also if you've got a slow video card, try changing the de-interlacing mode in VLC to discard via VLC / Video / Deinterlace / Discard.

If that doesn't work, try changing your Appearance settings to Normal via System / Preferences / Appearance, then Visual Effects and select Normal. It's a good balance and you'll still get the cube desktop.

...also found this which suggests using the blend deinterlacing mode to improve DVD playback,

gedit ~/.local/share/applications/vlc-dvd.desktop

Scroll down and find the line reading...

Exec=vlc %U

Replace that with...

Exec=vlc --vout-filter deinterlace --deinterlace-mode blend --volume 512 %f

After grabbing and installing Ubuntu 8.04 I then had to put together and setup the baby, luckily I wrote down most of everything I did in case I'd have to do it again and to help out you guys.

What follows are my findings and what I did to fix them. The machine I used is an HP Pavillion dv2000 model dv2742 special edition. It's got a built-in intel graphics card, 3gb memory, sata 250gb drive, wifi, bluetooth and an intel dual core 2 processor.

I installed the o/s using the 64-bit edition of Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron, all what you see below are workable settings which provided the right setup; hope they help your situation if you go down this route.

Update System

First port of call, check for any new updates post-install,

sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude upgrade

Dependencies / Software / Setup

Next, install Ruby, FlashPlayer, GCC Compiler, MySQL, JAVA, SqlLite,

sudo aptitude install mysql-server flashplugin-nonfree ruby-full libsqlite3-dev build-essential libmysqlclient15-dev sun-java6-jdk

Volume Mixer,

sudo aptitude install gnome-alsamixer

ImageMagick,

sudo aptitude install imagemagick

Ruby Gem Handler

I could get GEM from the repositories but because with each new update it breaks away from the in-built Linux installer it's best to install it from source,

wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/34638/rubygems-1.1.0.tgz 
tar xzvf rubygems-1.1.0.tgz
cd rubygems-1.1.0
sudo ruby setup.rb
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/gem1.8 /usr/bin/gem

Had problems updating the GEM system initally, so logged in as root to finish it off,

su root 
sudo gem update --system

Now when you type gem --version you should see GEM ready to roll,

Gem Libraries

The slow bit, ran this as root just to make sure it worked,

sudo gem install rails rake mongrel mongrel_cluster thin capistrano mysql termios sqlite3-ruby mini_magick will_paginate ZenTest liquid rcov

How to update RubyGem's later

Later on you'll want to update the gem system, which by going this way won't be possible with the usual 'sudo gem update --system', but this:

sudo gem install rubygems-update
sudo update_rubygems

VLC + GIT

Next VLC to play videos,

sudo aptitude install vlc

Transmission for torrents, most important bit,

sudo aptitude install transmission

And GIT to handle code versioning,

sudo aptitude install git-core

Firefox + MS Fonts

Next I need Firebug for Firefox 3. Ubuntu 8.04 comes with Firefox 3 beta 5, the one available thru Tools / Add-ons won't work with it; but thankfully it's in the repositories

sudo aptitude install firebug

And you'll probably need Microsoft Fonts later down the line,

sudo aptitude install msttcorefonts

Pimp GEDIT

The default Gnome Text Editor Isn't bad but let's add some extra's to really kick it in gear,

sudo aptitude install gedit-plugins

And tweak it,

wget http://robzon.kapati.net/rails/rhtml.lang && sudo mv rhtml.lang /usr/share/gtksourceview-2.0/language-specs/
wget http://robzon.kapati.net/rails/rails.xml && sudo mv rails.xml /usr/share/mime/packages
sudo update-mime-database /usr/share/mime

Follow the guide here to get the TextMate look,

• Pimp GEDIT

Now when you open rails source files they'll actually look right, thanks Grigio.

• More GEDIT Themes, including Vibrant Ink variants.

PostGreSql + Thunderbird

Pretty easy to install the most powerful db system, and the better email handler

sudo aptitude install postgresql thunderbird

Wine for Windows

Thanks to Google for their support the Wine project is going great, to get Windows software running natively on your machine,

First add the key,

wget -q http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/387EE263.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Then add the repository to your default repository list,

sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/sources.list.d/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list

And finally install it,

sudo apt-get install wine

Effects

To enable compiz effects make sure Appearance / Visual Effects is set to 'Extra', then install the Advanced Effects Manager,

sudo aptitude install compizconfig-settings-manager

This will give you access to the 3d cube, skydome effect and a host of other cool addons.

My desktop dpi is set to 100dpi, fonts set to 'Bitstream Vera Sans Roman 8pt', with 'Bitstream Vera Sans Bold 8pt' for Windows Title; and 'Liberation Mono 8pt' for fixed width font. Using subpixel smoothing for LCD.

Sound

For my laptop (hp pavillion dv2000 / dv2742se model), i had to use a different sound mixer to make sure the quickplay volume and mute buttons talked to the sound system.

So from the top menu bar, System / Preferences / Sounds, then set the Default Mixer Tracks hander device to: Conexant CX20561 (hermosa) (oss mixer).

Cleanup

To get any temp files carried on from the install, clean with,

sudo aptitude clean

Job done, however I had a problem with Hibernate & Suspend which was lucky fixed with some advice from here