My first Ubuntu experience

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Bobbin

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Someone was having trouble with win2000 and boot failure on their old dell c600 laptop. I thought hey what the heck...lets try Linux...seeing as I do not have a win2000 CD lying around. So I offered to try help him out.

Anyway so I downloaded 9.04 32bit off the Ubuntu site. SA servers were too slow so had to choose another site :( burned the ISO to CD when it was finally done.

The install gui was easy enough to follow. Asked it to use the entire disk to install with the owners consent to format the drive. Followed the prompts and Linux was up and running and pretty quick too at first.

Tried to increase screen resolution but it would not let me go beyond 800x600. Thinking back to Windows I thought maybe its video card drivers. But I wasn't sure what video card the C600 has. But after some fiddling this updater service pops up on Linux and I see in the list there is an update for Nvidia. So I thought cool beans and proceeded to update everything.

A few hundred meg later everything was sorted and I rebooted the PC. But I still could not increase the resolution and it looked pretty aweful and I also noticed refresh wasn't so great. I also found I could not enable desktop special effects :( Some searching on google revealed to me that this laptop probably has a radeon and not Nvidia?? :confused:

I found some Radeon drivers under Add/Remove and installed those. Rebooted again and the entire GUI freaked out. Could not even log in anymore :mad:

Since then I reformatted and tried to install Ubuntu twice the same way but now strangely after each install the PC's performance has dropped significantly and I received errors straight after a fresh install saying that certain aspects of the GUI could not load like quick user change and other buttons around the clock area.

Any suggestions?? :confused: Is Linux always like this?
 
Linux is not always like this ... in my limited experience though I am not able to offer you any advice.

Linux installs fine on my pc / laptop. haven't experienced this problem.
 
After logging in, do a "sudo lspci" command at a terminal.
Your output should be something like this:
Code: 
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub (rev 07)
[B]00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)[/B]
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02)
00:1a.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 02)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 92)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation ICH9M/M-E SATA AHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
02:01.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev ba)
02:01.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 04)
02:01.2 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 21)
02:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev ff)
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5761e Gigabit Ethernet PCIe (rev 10)
0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 5300 AGN [Shiloh] Network Connection
From my output you can see that I'm using a Intel graphics card.

According to google, it is an ATI card in the c600. On the Ubuntu forums, there are also a fix for the display problems: http://www.ubuntugeek.com/fix-for-video-problem-on-the-dell-latitude-c600c500.html
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=828588
 
i think it might be the xorg.conf file. I had the same problem, and if i remember correctly, i added additional resolutions to the xorg.conf file (including refresh rates).

Heres a link that might help: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=83973

Remember to backup the file first!!
 
Maybe the mobo is Nvidia and the graphics card was ATI?
 
Try modify the xorg.conf: Try to add these lines (overwriting the sections that are similarly named). Make a backup of xorg.conf first!
if the gui fails to load, from the console, delete the xorg and restart kdm

( sudo rm /etc/X.11/xorg.conf
sudo /etc/init.d/kdm restart
)


Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
ModelName "LCD Panel 1024x768"
HorizSync 31.5 - 48.0
VertRefresh 56.0 - 65.0
Option "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "vesa"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection
 
ATI is, unfortunately, not a very well supported graphics card because of the drivers that ATI provide (not the Ubuntu developers fault, ATI is just sucky at keeping their drivers updated) and Jaunty (the 9.04 version you have) also included a newer version of the backend systems that affect the GUI (called X server).

The only way I got around this was to install the older version of Ubuntu (8.10) that still used the older X server and then do an upgrade to 9.04. It seems that the new X server will take all the setting for the old one into consideration with the upgrade.

Of course, you could just wait another day or so for the new Karmic Koala release of Ubuntu. I have installed the Beta on my ATI Desktop machine with no problems whatsoever :)
 
Thanks for all the replies :)

The best result I got after following those links was being able to push it to 1024x768. Still could not enable desktop effects though and I am not sure if this means it is just not supported with the current config or if the drivers are not working properly.

In other words not sure what to expect if I try run 3D stuff as yet. Will play around if I have time but this OS is a bit alien to me. Despite these issues I do like it's layout and performance (I chose to manually create the partitions and performance came right...not sure if it was carrying settings over from the first install before like a repair or something). Just wish it was supported more by 3rd party as garethmcc pointed out.

Maybe I will wait for the new version and download when released :)
 
Have you tried downloading the driver from the ati website for your specific card? If there is one then install it, if it still does'nt work you'll pull your hair out trying. As stated above the older ati's are not very well supported. I had the same issues as you with an old ati 9200se, I did get it to work eventually but it was a schlepp! Later on I installed a
nvidia card and it worked instantly! Older ati's in Linux machines are a royal PITA!

Good luck, I hope you win!
 
Since then I reformatted and tried to install Ubuntu twice the same way but now strangely after each install the PC's performance has dropped significantly and I received errors straight after a fresh install saying that certain aspects of the GUI could not load like quick user change and other buttons around the clock area.
Click to expand...
The reason for the performance loss will most probably be due to some driver issue.

So lets start from the beginning and work our way out of this. First of we need a working system to be able to troubleshoot it.
Install Ubuntu.
If you can get the GUI (X) running, great! That makes it so much easier.
If you have X, go to System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers

If we are in the clear it will search for the appropriate drivers to install and install it. Remember to activate the driver in the self same window!

Reboot and you should be sorted. This is how it is supposed to go.

If that fails, here is instructions on how to get at least 1024x768 resolution going, but I doubt that compiz will be working 100%.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=5182387#post5182387
 
Post # 5 got the details of the card, and it only had 8MB of ram. If true, then I don't think hardware acceleration will work no matter what, the card is too old probably. I could be wrong of course.

Also, I may be wrong, but I can't remember just how high a resolution an 8MB card can support.
 
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