Making Songbird work with Ubuntu 8.10 and Nvidia 180 Drivers

So, my friend Chris mentioned that I should check out Songbird for an iTunes alternative.  So, I download it, and a whole bunch of stuff spits out on my screen, and the app doesn’t run.  I see something that looks like:

*** glibc detected *** ././songbird-bin: free(): invalid pointer:
0x00007f203935a8d0 ***

Hrm. after searching around, I find out that the libvisual plugin package is to blame. So, I remove it:

$ sudo apt-get remove libvisual-0.4-plugins

And it works! Just thought I’d pass this along in case someone else runs into this issue.  This is reported as bug 15306 in the Songbird Bugzilla – would be nice if they fix that at some point.

Fixing Xorg with Nvidia Driver ver 180.44

So, in order to fix an issue I was having with the Nvidia driver (weird drawing issue of the titlebars), I decided to upgrade to the latest version of the Nvidia driver.  This turned out to be quite an ordeal, because after upgrading, X didn’t want to start, giving me issues like “Failed to initalize GLX extension” and “Ubuntu is running in low graphics mode”.  After fighting with this for a few hours, I finally found the info I needed.  Here’s what I did to solve the issue:

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Setting up Dual Monitors with Nvidia on Ubuntu 8.10

Upon installing Ubuntu, I noticed that my second monitor wasn’t being used.

On the top panel, I noticed that there was an icon that popped up that said that there were no proprietary drivers installed, and that I should install the nvidia driver for best results.  I installed it, and had to reboot the system, which I did.

I figured that that would have solved the issue, and I would have at least been able to change the setting System->Preferences->Screen Resolution.  No go.  I looked online, and found a guide.  This helped me get the rest of the way.  Here’s what to do, in a nutshell:

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