LinuxTent

Rendering Graphics3D using Mathematica on linux generally and specifically on Ubuntu 9.04+ is not fun. The output is not displayed till you rotate the object, and once you rotate the 3D object the cpu usage jump to 100% which gives bad experience using Mathematica for Ubuntu users. This is a driver issue which it is expected to be addressed with the newer Intel graphics drivers which introduces UXA option instead of EXA as an acceleration method. As 9.04 was released this new technology was not stable enough to be enabled by default.

Now, to solve the problem for Mathematica you have two options:

1. Run Mathematica with mesa option
   mathematica -mesa

2. • Modify /etc/X11/xorg.conf to add the UXA option
     Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Option "AccelMethod" "uxa"
EndSection

   • Logout to restart the X server

   Notice: Don’t forget to backup your xorg.conf before editing

Sources:

1. UXA option
2. Mesa option

To Install graphics drivers on ubuntu.
You need to install the driver and the configuration tool. To do that, just type the following in a terminal window:
sudo apt-get install "drive-name" " configuration-tool"
You need to change “drive-name” and “configuration-tool” according to what you have.

If you don’t know the name of your graphics card, check it here:
lspci

In my case it was Nvidia so i changed “driver-name” to nvidia-glx and “configuration-tool” to vividia-setting.
For ATI cards , you can use xrog-driver-fglrx and fglrx-control

After installation, you need do some changes on the “xrog.conf” file .Use the following command to open the file:

sudo gedit /etc/x11/xrog.conf

restart your computer
have fun