Last time I checked Ubuntu 10.04 wasn't released yet
Phoronix: Easily Test Driving Gallium3D In Ubuntu 10.04
If you have been wanting to test drive the Gallium3D drivers on your new Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" installation but have been put off by the idea of building the Mesa stack yourself, fear not any longer. There's some new packages in the Ubuntu xorg-edgers PPA for easily facilitating the switch from classic Mesa to Gallium3D for Intel, ATI, and NVIDIA hardware...
http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=ODE3Nw
Last time I checked Ubuntu 10.04 wasn't released yet
but it's almost here.
some people have already upgraded to beta/rc and keep it running already.
it's not like it only becomes available on the day of announcement.
At the moment it's broken. Whenever they update the kernel image, it takes a while before the new xorg-edgers packages are available. Your old kernel will still have 3D though.
Please read the notes on the xorg-edgers page if you are using it, it explains what happened.
https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa
You need to install a 2.6.34+ kernel to use nouveau with xorg-edgers because there is no more of the linux-backports-modules-nouveau mess causing the problems you described. There is a kernel in the PPA as well as links to more current ones on the page.
Will these drivers offer Wine 3D support?
The only thing I care about in a GPU is 2D support and video codec acceleration. Right now running the Nvidia blob I get VDPAU which works great with mplayer/ffmpeg/XBMC. These 3D science projects may be fun for gamers but they don't do anything for regular users.
Im consider myself a linux newb, and i think its great to finally see a "easy" method for enabling Gallium3D, i may just try it out.
My notebook:
HP Compaq nw8440
Intel C2D T7400
ATI Mobility Radeon X1600
As of now i use Windows 7 since i need at least some 3D acceleration, but ATI Legacy drivers are unsupported (crap) and i really like poking around with Ubuntu.
So this is great news.