What are your system specs, btw and which version of Linux Mint 12 are you running (32 or 64 bit)? And you might have more luck with the latest ATI driver that you can download off the ATI site itself. Some users with ATI GPUs have had better luck with it than the one in the repos.Snakeman wrote:Thank you. Reinstall worked okay, continuing with the Mint 12 experience I of course wanted to update the OS to spec. which Update worked okay nearly to the end until the system somehow "lost" the desktop. I had to reboot via button (I tried to reboot through terminal but that didn't work either; I got the terminal screen but couldn't write anything on it and it was "stuck" so I couldn't even move the window).kmb42vt wrote:Snakeman wrote: Good luck on the install. Hope 3rd time is a charm. Laptops/notebooks especially with ATI video hardware are definitely problem areas for any Linux distro due to the myriads of different hardware configurations plus the fact that ATI still hasn't put any real effort into their video drivers for Linux. This makes no sense of course, simply because companies like Nvidia and ATI make their money off of the hardware, not the drivers. I've heard that a lot users in your predicament have better luck using the open source ATI driver over the proprietary driver. Others install the proprietary driver and then have to uninstall it due to display problems and then find their display problems gone after the following reboot.
Hope it works for you.
After restart the system seemed to work, but I noticed it had somehow sluggish feel. I figured this was due to open source graphics drivers so I, probably foolishly, tried to reinstall the Ati proprietary drivers neverthless since I figured if it doesn't work, I try Mint 11 again. I want my system to be as responsive as possible and so far everything seemed to "lag" slightly. Also, while I am ready to learn this new desktop system, I think I slightly prefer the old Gnome(?). Customization seemed to be bit of a problem because especially after Windows I want to be in control of the computer. I have used Mint 11 a bit and it seemed very intuitive and customizable, so far things haven't been quite so.
Okay, so the Ati drivers installed and surprisingly the screen is now undistorted. But the system seems even more laggy now. I'll try to fiddle a bit, perhaps trying to deactivate these drivers and see if there's some setting which would disable any graphics improvements and such. System still runs pretty hot, but not quite as hot as Mint 11 which even made me fearful of thermal shutdown. I really hope this would work, Mint 12 seems great with all the codecs and stuff already installed.
If I could only get the display working correctly and without lag and the 'old style' desktop with this, I'd be comfortable very comfortable with the system. Thermal problems keep me cautious with 11, although otherwise I probably would stick with it at least for a while until 12 is 'fixed'.
I've got Nvidia hardware myself so it's hard to pin the problem down to specifics.