Video card not supported by Mint 17

[just-me]

Hey guys, i've installed Mint 17 on a partition (dual-boot mode) but my graphics card is not supported (ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570). I really like Mint and i'm not yet ready to give it up and i have searched the forum for ways of installing fglrx, the proprietary driver, but i don't know which "tutorial" to follow so i won't get errors/black screens (there seems to be some "controversy" about ways to do that). I tried multiple linux distros, but Mint remains my favorite one so far so i would like to explore it and have it as my OS.

My questions are: is there a way to install the proprietary driver ? i know they've stopped the updates for my model some time ago, so can i install the final driver version (even though it's older) ? if not, what are my choices ? also, how big are the differences between proprietary drivers and the default ones installed (i would rather have the proprietary drivers installed, but if it can't be done, i want to know if i can safely stay with the default ones) ?

I would greatly appreciate any advice and i'll try learning more about linux so in the future i'll be able to answer questions not just post them.

Thank you so much!

[LudlowSteve]

Similar to this post. I have an old Dell desktop Pentium4 3Ghz with an ATI grphics card (RV370) this works fine on Mint 16 but when I installed 17 the screen was flawed (clicking at the lower left Start gave a blank subwindow). I rebooted with the graphics disabled (radeon.modeset=0) and it worked fine but slowly. There were no drivers shown in Driver Manager so I tried installing fglrx (sudo apt-get install fglrx) and it seemed to install ok but on reboot no change. So how can I get the video driver in Mint 16 and install it in 17? Or is there something else?

[Mark Phelps]

is there a way to install the proprietary driver ?

Basically -- NO. The AMD driver for the HD 2x/3x/4x-series cards requires an OLD version of the X-server that was last used in Mint 13. Any version of Mint newer than that will be incompatible with the AMD driver.

Sorry, but your choices are:
1) use the default open-source Radeon driver
2) Go back to Mint 13 -- in order to use the AMD restricted driver

[klick]

is there a way to install the proprietary driver ?

Basically -- NO. The AMD driver for the HD 2x/3x/4x-series cards requires an OLD version of the X-server that was last used in Mint 13. Any version of Mint newer than that will be incompatible with the AMD driver.

Sorry, but your choices are:
1) use the default open-source Radeon driver
2) Go back to Mint 13 -- in order to use the AMD restricted driver

Actually, there is another option; use a compatible video card that works with Mint 17, with no issues.

Any suggestions as to which video cards would install with good success and no issues??

[Mark Phelps]

Any suggestions as to which video cards would install with good success and no issues??

Worthwhile question -- but off-topic for this thread, which is concerned with a specific video card.

Please open a new thread if you want to discuss different AMD video cards and their drivers.

[bobafetthotmail]

this is probably a Cinnamon issue (graphic interface), as opensource driver operates more or less any AMD card
see here https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RadeonDriver

Or maybe a bug? Try updating manually your kernel to the latest to get latest opensource graphics driver (among other things). tutorial here inuxg.net/how-to-install-kernel-3-15-6-on-ubuntu-linux-mint-and-derivative-systems/
but there are scores of them.

[LudlowSteve]

Yes, may be a cinnamon issue. I installed 17.1 with KDE with no problems (sorry I changed 2 things - not scientific!)

[bobafetthotmail]

you actually changed only one, so my/your point is valid.
Mint 17.1 uses the same kernel/drivers/stuff as Mint 17, since Mint from 17 onwards is based off Ubuntu 14.04, the LTS release, in an effort to avoid the major pain in the backside that was hopping to a new codebase every few months and to allow people to upgrade painlessly for years without reinstalling every 6 months or so as before.

Mint 17.1 contains updated versions of Cinnamon (if it is Mint Cinnamon, Mint KDE isn't, of course) where they said they did fix and optimize quite a bit so you can try it out.
It also contains upgraded versions of the updater, that you can use to install newer kernels from official repos.
Open the Updater and select View ---> Kernel, it should open up a new panel to choose the kernel from a list.
Here, scroll down to Update Manager http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_rebecca_ci ... atsnew.php