Determine which brand of graphics card is installed on my system

1. From the desktop, launch a new terminal session by selecting: Applications > Accessories > Terminal. A new terminal window will display.
2. At the prompt (the blinking cursor), type: lspci | grep VGA then press Enter. This will return something similar to: 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G86 [GeForce 8400M GS] (rev a1)
3. From this information, it is clear I have an NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS graphics card.

Install proprietary graphics drivers

Though probably not required, it may be helpful to determine which brand of graphics card is installed on your system.

1. Ensure that you are connected to the Internet.
2. From the desktop, select: System > Administration > Hardware Drivers. The Hardware Drivers window will display after a quick hardware scan of your system is performed. The scan will determine what proprietary drivers are available and list the results.
3. Select the available driver. If multiple drivers for the same hardware are displayed (as is likely the case when installing the NVIDIA graphics driver), simply click the driver that identified as [Recommended].
4. Once you have chosen the appropriate driver, click: Activate. The new graphics driver will be downloaded and installed.
5. Once installation is complete, it is likely that you will need to reboot your system for the changes to take effect. For NVIDIA graphics cards, you will also now have an application titled: NVIDIA X Server Settings, located in the: System > Administration menu. This application will enable you to access information and settings specific to your graphics card.