ATI drivers

[jan_b]

From what I have read on the forums, it seems that there are problems with mint8 and ati graphic cards. I seem to have run up against this problem.

I have now installed mint8 three times from scratch. The first time -- after Mint8 had been running very well -- I took the option of installing the updates. I could not even shutdown properly after this. I installed again and chose the option of installing restricted driver. Another complete halt. I could not get even get to the terminal this time. Now, I have just installed from scratch yet again, and I am not touching a thing this time.

Initially, I had run the ISO from CDROM to ensure that everything was OK, and then installed, with Mint8 as the only operating system. Mint8 seemed to be running really fine and I was very pleased for a few days. But today, it's turned sour on me, after I decided to update and since then, it's been awful. I am not sure that I will bother with it any more. Such a disappointment.

Even though I had tested Mint8 on my system before installing to ensure everything was OK, it was only when I installed it for real that I discovered that it was NOT OK. I am so disappointed.


jan@jan-mint8desktop ~/Desktop $ lspci
00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 0 (rev a2)
00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 1 (rev a2)
00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 5 (rev a2)
00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 4 (rev a2)
00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.6 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 3 (rev a2)
00:00.7 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 2 (rev a2)
00:02.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:04.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:09.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:0a.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 LPC Bridge (rev a3)
00:0a.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP51 SMBus (rev a3)
00:0a.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Memory Controller 0 (rev a3)
00:0b.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:0b.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:0d.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 IDE (rev a1)
00:0e.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Serial ATA Controller (rev a1)
00:0f.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Serial ATA Controller (rev a1)
00:10.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 PCI Bridge (rev a2)
00:10.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP51 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
00:14.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Ethernet Controller (rev a3)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Mobility Radeon HD 3450
02:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc RV620 Audio device [Radeon HD 34xx Series]
03:05.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Agere Systems FW322/323 (rev 70)
jan@jan-mint8desktop ~/Desktop $

[BrianD]

From what I have read on the forums, it seems that there are problems with mint8 and ati graphic cards. I seem to have run up against this problem.

I don't have any ATI cards, so I can't address that part of your issue... but I did want to point out that it's not that there's "problems with mint8 and ati graphic cards", but rather there are problems with ATI cards and any distribution of Linux.

[jan_b]

Thanks for your input, Brian.

If there are problems with ATI cards, then any Linux system should say that it cannot be used on that particular machine. I did run it to test just to ensure that all was OK, but then I discovered later that it was not, so quite a lot of time was wasted - unnecessarily.

I think that this should be a warning to anyone who installs Linux systems to at least run for quite a while before being satisfied that all is OK.

[jan_b]

I wonder which display cards are ok with Linux, if any ?

[BrianD]

I know a lot of people (myself included) have successfully used nVidia cards in Linux systems that needed faster/better graphics capabilities...

[jan_b]

Thanks, Brian. Changing the card seems to be the only option if I wish to run Linux.

[jan_b]

I've just looked on my laptop where I have mint8 running along side vista, and I discover that has also an ATI card in it, which seems to be OK. I have also done an update on that laptop without it falling over, thank goodness. I think that I shall do another update on my desktop to see whether it completely falls over again.

[jan_b]

There's more info re ati cards on these pages

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/l ... ng=English

http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Main_Page

http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Troubleshooting

[Mr.Slinky]

I feel your pain Jan_B,

I've got an older ATI card Radeon 9700 Pro and it has been a problem for me to get the TV working. Apparently, it's an ATI problem with all Linux OS and from what I have been able to learn it is mostly with certain cards mostly legacy older cards. It's frustrating especially for us Newbies. Anyway, it's a bit annoying since I do like their graphics cards-but I have found that I prefer Mint to Microsoft so I'm not going to switch OS I'll just have to find a new card for sale elsewhere that is more compatible. For me it works with Mint nicely by default in Mint, but I have not as of yet been able to get the card fully functional.

[CaptainSifff]

Hi jan_b!
I don't have much to add about Mint Linux, but I'm under the impression that the proprietary fglrx driver has a problem with a particular variant of the nForce4 chipset (the MCP51 variant) on AMD systems.
I see you have a Radeon 3000 series card, so you might take the result from a guy on the gentoo forums:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-82 ... rt-25.html
He got his card working with a catalyst-driver before catalyst-9.9. so the last working version he encountered was catalyst-9.8.
If you have tried to get newer versions of the catalyst working on your setup and failed to get them working you might want to check, if your symptoms match those
described in the bug report here:
http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1794
If you suffer the same symptoms with newer catalyst versions, I would greatly appreciate it if you add your results to that bug report.
Good Luck in getting your board working!

[Elmrsomudo]

im total newbie in linux but i have to say that i have ati 3xxx card and i have installed default drivers that system recommended and it works like charm i even play HON linux version and it works much better then on windows7
thats all