Linux Format forums

Re: Only older Linux distributions run on my new pc[Solved]

guy — Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:48 pm

Author: guy

Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:48 pm

Weatherlawyer wrote:

How can the developers or whoever have been so bloody stupid?

I keep asking myself the same question. Arrogance spring to mind.

Quote:

It's put me off buying the magazine.

Not their fault. They are innocent victims like the rest of us.
It's put me off trusting any software provider anywhere, ever, though. I thought the debian community had more respect for regressions. I guess the Ubuntu and Mint people thought likewise.

Re: Only older Linux distributions run on my new pc[Solved]

Weatherlawyer — Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:20 am

Author: Weatherlawyer

Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:20 am

Dutch_Master wrote:

Disable the nouveau driver and get the official nVidia 3D drivers from the nVidia website (don't bother with the ones in the repo's) Mind that you'd need to install the nVidia driver as root on the cli, not in a terminal!

How do I do that?

I can't see my boot up nor nothing; it screwed up my Dell doing an upgrade. And as it turned out, I don't even like Unity, the Vista of Linux.
I will have to get the appropriate code from another computer and then, presumably, learn the command line?

How can the developers or whoever have been so bloody stupid?
It's put me off buying the magazine.

Re: Only older Linux distributions run on my new pc[Solved]

towy71 — Wed Feb 01, 2012 10:18 am

Author: towy71

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2012 10:18 am

I will mark it as solved but, as always the original poster should edit their first post and mark it themselves, this is after all a self-help forum

Re: Only older Linux distributions run on my new pc[Solved]

RolandS — Wed Feb 01, 2012 9:22 am

Author: RolandS

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2012 9:22 am

(moderator, can you please mark this thread as 'solved'?)

Finally I managed (with trial and error) to install Mint 12 as follows:

1. I started the liveCD Mint, not in compatability mode, but with settings 'nomodeset' and 'acpi=off'. The live desktop is Gnome, not Gnome-shell.

2. Installed Mint 12 and rebooted

3. On rebooting: scrambled screen; ctrl+alt+backspace brought me back to the Gnome desktop

4. installed updates, restarted, again ctrl+alt+backspace

5. installed recommended NVidia drivers

6. rebooted: Gnome-shell!

Re: Only older Linux distributions run on my new pc[Solved]

RolandS — Wed Jan 18, 2012 9:17 am

Author: RolandS

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 9:17 am

chris0161 wrote:

The intel i5 processor has limited built in on chip graphics. It looks from the image that the Packard-Bell iXtreme I6803 has a cover fitted over the motherboard dvi port.

If this is the case I would unplug the nvidia graphics card. Remove the cover off the built in dvi port (located on the rear next to the 4 usb ports) and plug your monitor into there.

If your machine boots into a desktop with a live distro this will prove your problem is with your graphics card or its driver.

Hope this is some help.

I removed the nVidia card and used the built in card (analogue in my case); then I could easily boot the Mint 12 live cd!
I installed Mint12 (my prefered distro) on an extern HD, but could not boot, not even in recovery mode.

Next I installed Ubuntu 11.10 on the extern HD, installed Gnome-shell, and could boot.

Then, very sneaky, I put the nvidia card back again; Ubuntu booted in fall-back mode (is that the right word?), even after having installed the recommended drivers. So no gnome-shell possible in my system with either nvidia 420, 440, or ATI Radeon HD 5450.

Thanks for your advice.

Re: Only older Linux distributions run on my new pc[Solved]

RolandS — Sun Jan 15, 2012 5:49 pm

Author: RolandS

Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2012 5:49 pm

heiowge wrote:

I use Mint 12 on my main desktop, but on my netbook, where I've got a much lighter spec, I find Gnome 2 works better than Gnome 3, so I've gone with Mint 11. Maybe you could try that, or Xubuntu 11.10?

Yes, of course; but I can't stand that my new pc, with higher specs than my old laptop, is not capable of running the newest versions. It is partly curiosity: why??
And I would like to run Mint 12 on it as Mint 10 will not be supported by the end of the year (I think).

Re: Only older Linux distributions run on my new pc[Solved]

heiowge — Sun Jan 15, 2012 5:42 pm

Author: heiowge

Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2012 5:42 pm

I use Mint 12 on my main desktop, but on my netbook, where I've got a much lighter spec, I find Gnome 2 works better than Gnome 3, so I've gone with Mint 11. Maybe you could try that, or Xubuntu 11.10?

Re: Only older Linux distributions run on my new pc[Solved]

RolandS — Sun Jan 15, 2012 5:30 pm

Author: RolandS

Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2012 5:30 pm

Quote:

I would unplug the nvidia graphics card. Remove the cover off the built in dvi port (located on the rear next to the 4 usb ports) and plug your monitor into there.

Thank you; I will try this one of these days, and will let you know the result.

Re: Only older Linux distributions run on my new pc[Solved]

chris0161 — Sun Jan 15, 2012 2:50 pm

Author: chris0161

Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2012 2:50 pm

The intel i5 processor has limited built in on chip graphics. It looks from the image that the Packard-Bell iXtreme I6803 has a cover fitted over the motherboard dvi port.

If this is the case I would unplug the nvidia graphics card. Remove the cover off the built in dvi port (located on the rear next to the 4 usb ports) and plug your monitor into there.

If your machine boots into a desktop with a live distro this will prove your problem is with your graphics card or its driver.

Hope this is some help.

Re: Only older Linux distributions run on my new pc[Solved]

Rhakios — Sat Jan 14, 2012 10:09 pm

Author: Rhakios

Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2012 10:09 pm

RolandS wrote:

Quote:

The nvidia troubles are just what loads of us have been experiencing.

So where is everybody?

They're all the people reading your thread in the hope that someone is going to deliver up an easy answer.
My only newish hardware only has Intel graphics, so I can't actually offer anything helpful.

Re: Only older Linux distributions run on my new pc[Solved]

RolandS — Sat Jan 14, 2012 9:54 pm

Author: RolandS

Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2012 9:54 pm

Quote:

The nvidia troubles are just what loads of us have been experiencing.

So where is everybody? I was thinking I was the only one having these problems. Searched in a lot of forums.

Quote:

I think I will stick to Mint 10 for the moment, and will see if Mint 13 is more successfull for me. Or, when I have the courage, I will try one day again another graphic card; this is easier for me than working with the cli (remember: installing or even starting a live session is the problem).

Thanks for the comments anyway!

Re: Only older Linux distributions run on my new pc[Solved]

guy — Sat Jan 14, 2012 9:32 pm

Author: guy

Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2012 9:32 pm

Dutch_Master wrote:

Yes, that was the difficult bit. Has anyone posted a genuinely complete and bugfree HowTo yet? (I'm way past the need, but others may find it handy).

Re: Only older Linux distributions run on my new pc[Solved]

Dutch_Master — Sat Jan 14, 2012 6:22 pm

Author: Dutch_Master

Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2012 6:22 pm

Disable the nouveau driver and get the official nVidia 3D drivers from the nVidia website (don't bother with the ones in the repo's) Mind that you'd need to install the nVidia driver as root on the cli, not in a terminal!

Re: Only older Linux distributions run on my new pc[Solved]

guy — Sat Jan 14, 2012 4:24 pm

Author: guy

Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2012 4:24 pm

The nvidia troubles are just what loads of us have been experiencing. The new default driver used by debian squeeze, ubuntu whatever and mint 12 apparently breaks a fair scatter of chips/cards, including the framebuffer - the default we can always fall back on when other things break - and it is not easy to roll back. IMHO a real dumb-bunny bad by the distro teams, especially debian stable should have known better.

I was able to fix my desktop PC only by swapping to a different graphics card (also nvidia).

Not sure why the ATI should fail, can't even remember if support is generally as good as for nvidia. How many distros did you try on it?

Re: Only older Linux distributions run on my new pc[Solved]

RolandS — Sat Jan 14, 2012 1:30 pm

Author: RolandS

Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2012 1:30 pm

Thanks helowge,

Almost 150 users read my message now.

Maybe someone can help me? I have additional information about my system:

Code:

System: Host roland-desktopMint Kernel 2.6.35-22-generic-pae i686 (32 bit) Distro Linux Mint 10 Julia
CPU: Quad core Intel Core i5-2300 (-MCP-) cache 6144 KB flags (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) bmips 22347.1
Clock Speeds: (1) 1600.00 MHz (2) 1900.00 MHz (3) 1600.00 MHz (4) 1600.00 MHz
Graphics: Card nVidia Device 0de2 X.Org 1.9.0 Res: 1920x1080@50.0hz
GLX Renderer GeForce GT 420/PCI/SSE2 GLX Version 4.1.0 NVIDIA 260.19.06 Direct Rendering Yes
Audio: Card-1 nVidia Device 0bea driver HDA Intel BusID: 01:00.1
Card-2 Intel Cougar Point High Definition Audio Controllerdriver HDA Intel BusID: 00:1b.0
Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Version 1.0.23
Network: Card Intel 82579V Gigabit Network Connection driver e1000e v: 1.0.2-k4 at port f040 BusID: 00:19.0
Disks: HDD Total Size: 2250.5GB (5.8% used) 1: /dev/sda WDC_WD10EARS 1000.2GB
2: USB /dev/sdb 2500JB_External 250.1GB 3: USB /dev/sdh Bell_Go 1000.2GB
Partition: ID:/ size: 579G used: 49G (9%) fs: ext4
Info: Processes 216 Uptime 3 min Memory 435.8/4004.2MB Runlevel 2 Client Shell inxi 1.4.12