I'll mess around with some OS's once I get some DVDs to install it with. Maybe Re writable DVDs would help next time. Thanks for your help anyway.
No problem
My experience with elementary OS is that its always lagging behind and not very good at the core for whatever reason.
You can always try and install from source per the instructions on the link i gave you though the kernel drivers should already be installed.
One thing to check is the xorg drivers are installed xf86-video-openchrome
these may mbe named differently on Ubuntu based dsitros 'cause buntu is cool like that' ;'/
As far as I can see the drivers are installed, but if they are running I am not sure.
Is the driver being loaded into the kernel at boot?
No idea. How would I find out?
And how would I do that?
lsmod will list all the modules that are loaded. This link will give the basics( at the bottom.) if you have a bunch of .c file you are going to need to write a makefile by hand. The driver if you are using Linux 2.6 over above would be in .ko format. If it is before the kernel will handle a .o extension. this is not the type of easy fix. Can you post a link to .ebuild file? It could also be a issue with the windows managers configuration which means there could be countless configuration options you might need to set just for this system. Unichrome project is not ,at least in my opinion, know for the most stable drivers.
http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/add-remove-list-linux-kernel-modules/