need to rollback video drivers

[wake07]

Hello, I've been enjoying Mint 17.3 64bit Mate on a platter drive for a while with flawless operation on 2 monitors.

I just bought an SSD and put Mint 18.3 on it. My second monitor ended up with black bars on the left and right. The picture wasn't squeezed between the bars, it was like the bars are painted over the image. No amount of playing in the settings or console could get it to work. They would go away on a lower resolution but always returned on 1920x1080. I've changed the video cable (vga) and ran the Auto set up on the monitor several times.

So I installed 17.3 on the SSD and it has the same problem. I am currently trying LMDE and it has the same issue. Only the 17.3 on the HDD works.

It turns out the drivers on the 'old' 17.3 are older than the drivers on the 'new' 17.3 disk image.

Old (working) version is x.org 1.15.1 drivers: ati,radeon GLX renderer: Gallium 0.4 on ATI RV530 GLX Version: 2.1 mesa 10.1.3

New (not working) x.org 1.16.4 drivers: ati,radeon GLX renderer: Gallium 0.4 on ATI RV530 GLX Version: 2.1 mesa 10.3.2

What is the procedure to roll back the x.org and mesa versions?

Yes I know this is a dinosaur of a PC but damned if I don't just love this thing and except for stuttery netflix it's done everything I've wanted it to do. Not one component has failed since new, if you can believe it. And the raptor drive I have Mint on boots it just as fast as the SSD, right to the second.

Code: Select all

mint@mint ~ $ inxi -Fxz
System:    Host: mint Kernel: 3.16.0-4-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit gcc: 4.8.4) 
           Desktop: MATE 1.16.1 (Gtk 3.14.5+4) Distro: LinuxMint 2 betsy 
Machine:   Mobo: Gigabyte model: GA-M55PLUS-S3G
           Bios: Award v: F15B date: 10/22/2008
CPU:       Dual core AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (-MCP-) cache: 1024 KB
           flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 svm) bmips: 4018 
           Clock Speeds: 1: 1000 MHz 2: 1000 MHz
Graphics:  Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] RV530 [Radeon X1600 XT/X1650 GTO]
           bus-ID: 02:00.0
           Display Server: X.Org 1.16.4 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 1920x1080@60.00hz, 1920x1080@60.00hz
           GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on ATI RV530
           GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 10.3.2 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio:     Card-1 NVIDIA MCP51 High Definition Audio 
           driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:10.1 
           Card-2 Creative Labs SB Audigy2 Platinum
           driver: snd_emu10k1 port: 9000 bus-ID: 01:06.0 
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k3.16.0-4-amd64
Network:   Card: NVIDIA MCP51 Ethernet Controller
           driver: forcedeth port: e000 bus-ID: 00:14.0
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: NA (-)
           ID-1: /dev/sda model: HP_SSD_M700_240G size: 240.1GB temp: 34C
           ID-2: USB /dev/sdb model: USB_Flash_Drive size: 16.0GB temp: 0C
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 46.0C mobo: N/A 
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A 
Info:      Processes: 145 Uptime: 14 min Memory: 512.0/3964.2MB 
           Init: SysVinit runlevel: 2 Gcc sys: 4.9.2 
           Client: Shell (bash 4.3.301) inxi: 2.1.28 
mint@mint ~ $ 

[Hoser Rob]

Oh dear. Some big issues here.

First, that machine is NOT running Mint 18.3. It's running LMDE 2, which is a different kettle of fish. 18.3 is Ubuntu based and LMDE is Debian based, and they're different.

If you post LMDE questions in the regular Mint forum sections you're going to get a bunch of responses for Ubuntu based Mint that aren't necessarily going to work in LMDE. Debian is much more restrictive than Ubuntu, no ppa sources allowed for example.

Second, that's a 10 year old AMD card. The open source driver for that card (radeon) is the ONLY one available, in any Linux distro. That's probably been true for 5 years. ANy attempts to install another driver will just break the video.

The first thing you need to do is turn off all the desktop compositing/eye candy since that card doesn't have proper 3D hardware video acceleration in Linux.

The easiest way to roll back things would probably be to just do a data backup and clean reinstall. I've done that for less messed up systems. If possible I'd recommend setting up the new install with a separate partition for /home, which isn't hard and I think should be the default install.

[wake07]

Thank you for the reply.

I was running lmde on a flash drive but didn't bother putting it on the ssd since it already had the black bar issue. The issue exists in both lmde and 18.3.

If i wanted to merely go back a few versions of the same driver, what would the command be?