ATI graphics card on Ubuntu

Not everything will work perfectly smoothly on my Ubuntu Linux install. There are a lot of problems solved (like streaming music, video, to a certain extent - it would give you what you want most of the time, but also crash the whole browser, if embedded, or be extremely choppy for non-embedded, like for some non-streaming formats), some of them that will never get solved until a company decides there's a strong-enough [demand/customer rage] (like for Flash, or Java plugin), and some in the esoteric annoyances.

In the latter category, I think it is the way my ATI graphics card driver is working - or not working - that wins the palm. It would load correctly sometimes at load time, and it will equally not load at all, throw an error, at other times. An issue with the driver, thus the kernel. When the ATI driver doesn't load (it's a proprietary non-free driver made by ATI), then an alternate generic driver (mesa) is loaded instead, with poorer performance (b/c it is generic?). I don't know what it is, and I'm quite pessimistic at what I can find on Google (or "resourceless", b/c I don't know what to ask Google), so I've resorted to bearing with it (besides, not having my graphics card work properly is really just an annoyance, b/c it just means the cool screensavers aren't as smooth, and, well, I can't play "games"?).

I did notice that if I reboot my system, then it would probably work at the next reboot. I also suspect that it might have to do with my dual-boot, or more precisely, whether the last operating system booting was WindowsXP or Linux, which is a far-fetched explanation, but certainly worth trying when there doesn't seem to be any other obvious variable at boot time.

Will test that out...