I switched video cards
I switched video cards recently. I found the Radeon drivers for Linux had been updated and no longer supported my Radeon 7000VE. The symptoms started when I updated my version of Ubuntu. It turns out I was able to get into text mode but no GUI. This was really strange since the card had worked before.
Going back turned out to be an option once. The second time I tried, the operating system wouldn't even install. I expect this sort of behaviour from Microsoft not Linux!
Well after trying several options to get my Linux running it turned out the best solution was to get a new video card. Why not... They are fairly cheap. If you have the money that is... It took me a month to save up the cash. All I can say is thank you to Joanne and Bill for sending me the Mac Mini last summer. I would have been stuck otherwise.
I settled on a GeForce FX5200. As a friend describes it... "A budget card but still nice". The card functions out of the box. There are 2D drivers for it which are nice and stable. I can do just about 90% of what I did with my Radeon 7000VE. Some programs such as WINE whined and partially functioned. Other programs such as Warsow complained there wasn't enough video RAM then decided not to work.
After a month of this my friend Dave C. told me how to install the 3D drivers. After previous problems I got smart and backed up my xorg.conf file. The first time around with KDE it didn't let me install anything. I tried installing the drivers directly from the NVidia site with no joy. They installed but I had the same problems as before. I couldn't get into graphics mode. Dave was perplexed. After a couple of days he came back and suggested I install the Gnome desktop and try it from there. No joy there either. Then he suggested I run some configuration program. This whined and said I was missing something. I installed the missing package and the configuration program worked. I had 3D. Of course I had to log out and restart the X Server.
WINE functioned again. Warsow worked. There were some additional effects on the screen. Not too shabby. I rebooted and guess what? No graphics mode. I backed up the xorg.conf again to a different file. Then I restored the 2D xorg.conf. The reboot worked and I had graphics again. I checked and there was the same problems I had with 2D before. I restored the 3D xorg.conf, logged out, and restarted the X Server. All the 3D stuff came back.
Since I don't use the 3D drivers all the time, I guess I can live with manually switching the configuration file as I need to use it. It would be nice if it worked properly though.
Going back turned out to be an option once. The second time I tried, the operating system wouldn't even install. I expect this sort of behaviour from Microsoft not Linux!
Well after trying several options to get my Linux running it turned out the best solution was to get a new video card. Why not... They are fairly cheap. If you have the money that is... It took me a month to save up the cash. All I can say is thank you to Joanne and Bill for sending me the Mac Mini last summer. I would have been stuck otherwise.
I settled on a GeForce FX5200. As a friend describes it... "A budget card but still nice". The card functions out of the box. There are 2D drivers for it which are nice and stable. I can do just about 90% of what I did with my Radeon 7000VE. Some programs such as WINE whined and partially functioned. Other programs such as Warsow complained there wasn't enough video RAM then decided not to work.
After a month of this my friend Dave C. told me how to install the 3D drivers. After previous problems I got smart and backed up my xorg.conf file. The first time around with KDE it didn't let me install anything. I tried installing the drivers directly from the NVidia site with no joy. They installed but I had the same problems as before. I couldn't get into graphics mode. Dave was perplexed. After a couple of days he came back and suggested I install the Gnome desktop and try it from there. No joy there either. Then he suggested I run some configuration program. This whined and said I was missing something. I installed the missing package and the configuration program worked. I had 3D. Of course I had to log out and restart the X Server.
WINE functioned again. Warsow worked. There were some additional effects on the screen. Not too shabby. I rebooted and guess what? No graphics mode. I backed up the xorg.conf again to a different file. Then I restored the 2D xorg.conf. The reboot worked and I had graphics again. I checked and there was the same problems I had with 2D before. I restored the 3D xorg.conf, logged out, and restarted the X Server. All the 3D stuff came back.
Since I don't use the 3D drivers all the time, I guess I can live with manually switching the configuration file as I need to use it. It would be nice if it worked properly though.
posted by Mike at 11:27 a.m.
0 comments
