Ubuntu video drivers 6.06 LTS
 

To whom it may concern,

I have a new Gigabyte mother board with a VIA K8M800 video hardward on the motherboard.

Every time Ubuntu goes and does some tricky graphics work like changing the screen saver, esp on random, it hags the screen.

The rest of the computer seems to still work but you can't get past the hung video.

Someone said it was probably a very new video card that had not been supported with the release. Does this sound right.

What is my next move to get it up and running?


Sincerely,
Michael John Ritter,
Adelaide, South Australia,
Mobile Ph/SMS: 0414 472 731 (from within Australia),
International callers from a mobile service +61414472731.
Available 24 hours, 7 days a week.

I have the same on-board video chipset. It will hang for any screen saver requiring 3D video acceleration. To avoid it, I just picked "blank screen" as my screen saver. I power off my monitor will idle, so the screen saver doesn't matter to me.

I never found the root cause of the problem, but linux support of via is not as good as with nvidia video. If you get an Nvidia video card, you can get 3D video acceleration.

You can also probably avoid freezing by switing the video driver from "via" to "vesa". Doscroll down until you see:and change "via" to "vesa" and save changes. The change will take effect by rebooting, or restarting X with ctrl+alt+backspace. The vesa driver shouldn't hang the computer, but it doesn't offer 3D video acceleration either. If you use vesa, you can't watch full screen video, but you can with via.

I have similar Gigabyte mobo and the on board video has another limitation that you may run into if you get a TV card. It seems to be missing the code for YUV which is required by tvtime and other TV viewers. I purchase an FX5200 Nvidia chip set card with 256MB of memory and all is well. If you shop on line it will cost less than $50. It gave me video support for all that I needed and is visually faster with 3D rendering. Separate cards have their own memory so they don't take any from the CPU. I'm quite happy with my system now.

Ubuntu VIA chipset
 

Dear all,

Thanks for your words. It seems that there is a 'fix' for my problems but you have to trade 3D capability or get some more hardware.

The real fix would be Ubuntu making a modification to the software. I have emailed them with my problem. I can't say if they will fix it or it will come out with the next release of Ubuntu.

It's a shame really, it's such a nice system. Looks like the first thing I will try is setting the video driver to VESA.

Thanks.
Mike Ritter.
Adelaide, South Australia,
Australia.