amd 1055t x6 2.8ghz, gigabyte 880gm-usb3 mobo, ati hd 5770 video card, 4 gigs ram (don't remember brand), 500gb & 1tb western digital caviar blacks.

I have so far tried Debian live disks... gnome, kde, xfce. Mint 15 & LMDE. Ubuntu 12.04 & 13.04.

On all of them installing the proprietary gfx driver creates micro stutter just moving the mouse around.

Gnome debian refuses to boot into gnomeshell without the proprietary gfx driver installed. KDE debian is just slow in general and hangs a bunch. XFCE debian works fine mostly but forgets the resolution I set. Have to change resolution back to 1920x1080 every time I log in or restart. LMDE has it's own problems so I just decided not to use it (not my problems but stuff I have read about it).

Mint 15 & the ubuntu's both are jittery at best and I havn't been able to get the open source amd driver for them (that might be their only problem)as it isn't in the repos that I have seen. Most of the time trying to boot from either disk or usb just hangs on the splash screen. Have only gotten them to boot once each. Every other time splash screen.

I'm lost on what to do. Every time I turn around something is breaking or wrong with my installs. Been at this for a couple months now trying to switch over but it's a perpetual problem. I'm not here to complain. I am genuinely asking what am I doing wrong here. I have tried burned disc installs, flash drive installs.

Everyone recommends linux highly on forums and such but after everything I've seen it is one big disaster... I refuse to believe that as so many people have such success with it.

Hi,

all your problems seem to be because of your video card. Have you considered using a video card that has proper Free drivers?

Evo2.

1 members found this post helpful.

I am getting a laptop soon and building new main system shortly as well. What would be the ideal choice in gfx hardware to look for. I suspected it was something in my computer because everywhere I've asked for help is responded with "never heard of that" or something similar.

Unless you're getting a gaming laptop, Intel graphics are perfectly supported in the open source drivers, and performance is acceptable for non-3d intensive tasks.

Also, have you tried installing the proprietary drivers in your desktop? I run Debian "testing" (so it's not so outdated) on my AMD graphics laptop and it runs perfectly fine with KDE. I will say it wasn't the best experience with the open source drivers.

1 members found this post helpful.

Your system is very close in spec to mine, and I have the same graphics card on my desktop system. I, however, have had no real issues installing any recent Linux distro that I can remember. I've never had an issue with the video card, but you will get better results with the proprietary driver and the ATI control center. Even with the open source driver, you shouldn't be seeing any of the issues you are.

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Have tried all 3 debians with and without proprietary. Wasn't stuttery on open source drivers at all. But the gnomeshell wouldn't load, kept defaulting to gnome2?. KDE hangs up quite often. And XFCE deb refuses to remember the resolution setting so I have to reset it every time I log in.

I would prefer debians over others as I like the whole ideal around it hence my attempts with almost exclusive debian and derivative. That and it seems the most popular behind the *buntu's so large documentation and support structure.

Ultimate goal is an arch system but that is a ways off unless I can get these working correctly.

I keep thinking I'm missing some small step. With the amd driver you just install and it's set right? Or is there something I need to do to intialize it properly? or something else related?

Problems with micro-stuttering in the Catalyst drivers are well known, AMD is working on that. You can try to use the free drivers, which should support your videocard, if you install the package firmware-linux-nonfree. You may want to consider using a newer kernel than the Debian default (3.2), since there where serious improvements in the last time for the free radeon drivers. I currently use the 3.10 kernel with the dynamic power management patches from Alex Deucher (will be integrated in the 3.11 kernel) on Slackware current, which gives me proper power management and the ability to use the integrated UVD unit for hardware video decoding on my HD6870.

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Hi,

since others apparently have the same card and report no problems I can think of three possibilities for why you are having problems.

1. Bad hardware:
   -> Does the video card work as expect under a non-linux os?
2. You actually have a different card;
   -> What is the output of "lspci |grep -i vga"?
3. You've missed something in the setup:
   -> Have you checked and followed http://wiki.debian.org/AtiHowTo ?

HTH,

Evo2.

2 members found this post helpful.

Well I'm feeling quite the fool now. Using XFCE everything is perfect. I claimed to like the amount of documentation but did not avail myself of it. http://wiki.debian.org/AtiHowTo solved all my problems. XFCE is now as smooth as butter. I was following the windows mentality and installing the .run file directly from the amd website.

For the record the card is fine under windows, and now under linux.

And just for posterity

Hi,
Brilliant. For hardware/driver related things the Debian wiki is often an extremely good source. It's usually the first place I check for things like this.

Enjoy your system.

Cheers,

Evo2.

1 members found this post helpful.