So my girlfriend got fed up with Windows. The constant exploits, viruses, slow degeneration of the registry into an slimy ooze of nebulous information. In fact, her windows machine decided to blue screen on every boot, even in safe mode.

I'm not writing to bitch about windows though. I'm writing because she decided to go with Linux, and the first thing that came to mind for a beginner is Ubuntu. Keep in mind, I'm a slackware guy and generally turn my nose up at such things, but this isn't for me. Plus I wanted to see what Ubuntu is all about. The install was easy, the configuration was easy, I now have good old XP running in a VirtualBox, etc. Things are going great.

Two problems. First, it's a bit laggy. Some of the screen savers make it seem like the computer was decrypting an NSA information stream...it's like watching a slideshow. That's fine, it's a fucking screen saver. I just went with a simple one.

Second, flash player in Firefox on Ubuntu 9.04 is fucking slow in full-screen. After beating the forums and google to death, I finally found something that works:

sudo mkdir /etc/adobe
sudo echo "OverrideGPUValidation = 1" >> /etc/adobe/mms.cfg

Why does it work? How the f should I know? Ask Adobe. It worked for me and if you're have problems with flash in fullscreen on Ubuntu, give it a shot. I've also noticed that many people suggest disabling hardware acceleration for a performance gain. In order for the above trick to work, you must RE-enable hardware acceleration in flash: right click on any flash video, go to "Settings" and check "Enable Hardware Acceleration."

Voilà.

PS. Try slackware...never had flash problems =D