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Old 06-20-2014, 11:41 AM   #1
Prince Imhotep
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An hideous desktop experience !!!!!!


Hi,


Unity, Gnome flashback, and Gnome 3 all of them just refuse to work on ubuntu trusty, no matter what I do, with the worst of them being Gnome 3.

Please allow me to explain.

I was trying to install Ubuntu trusty, and before I install a new release, I like to sandbox the release to see how things will go. So what I do is I make a live usb with persistent partition -- the usb is divided to two partitions, and the liveos and the persistent file-system each have a partition -- so I can install and remove whatever software I want to try without the fuss of installing then breaking the new install, then reinstalling ... you know.

Now probably some of you will start to say that any trouble I'm having probably is caused by the system being live rather than traditionally copied to an hdd. I'm telling you, that there's no reason to think like that, I've tried this with many releases before like 11.04, 12.04, and centos 6.4 and they all work fine -- of course with varying degrees of difficulty --.

Now trusty defaults to unity as the desktop environment, and the very first thing I did after booting into the newly made liveusb, is I installed the nvidia-173 legacy driver -- because I have an old nvidia graphics card --, generated an xorg.conf using nvidia-xconfig, then rebooted.

After that trouble started, when I logged into the system, all I found was a black screen with only the pointer showing, nothing else. I rebooted the liveusb without the persistence, and searched through the web to find someone suggesting that unity might be the reason. So I rebooted back the liveusb with the persistence, switched to a console, and installed gnome-panel. After gnome-panel installed I terminated the session using
Code:
killall -u ubuntu
, then on the logon screen I logged to gnome flashback with compiz, only to find the same problem. Switched to console, terminated the session, then on logon screen I logged on to gnome with metacity -- no compiz --, and this is the only desktop environment that worked with me on trusty till now.

Of course I used the working desktop to search for a cause or a solution, I found this page http://askubuntu.com/questions/44984...er-after-login and I tried all the suggestions they came up with, to no satisfying result. But I came to a hunch that compiz might be the culprit, so I loaded ccsm and disabled opengl and compositing, and all the effects related to them, logged out, logged in to gnome with compiz and it actually somewhat worked. The windows were without borders or title bars but, it worked, so after that what I tried to do is find a replacement release for the compiz installed on my system. I found nothing, no ppa, nothing on Ubuntu packages, only the source code, and I thought this should be the last resort.

So I upgraded the trusty installation, and everything went fine, everything got upgraded including the kernel image and headers. Then I reinstalled the graphics driver, then rebooted. And I found no difference what so ever. I installed gnome 3, as a final attempt, and when I logged on to it, it was so strange. The background was blue like the windows blue screen of death, when I clicked on the buttons on the menu bar only artifacts were shown, It was just unusable.

So now I don't know what to do. Does any one have a clue to this situation? Any contribution is most welcome.


Thanks.
 
Old 06-20-2014, 12:09 PM   #2
saivinoba
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I don't know the solution to your problem but it looks like graphics card issue. Is your system 3D accelaration capable? Has it worked before? Coz unity was in Ubuntu since 11.04 I guess.

This laptop I'm typing from, does not support 3D accelaration and I see same bluescreen when if I try to use Gnome shell. I have install MATE and am happy with it.
 
Old 06-20-2014, 12:34 PM   #3
Prince Imhotep
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Thank you for your contribution.

Quote:
I don't know the solution to your problem but it looks like graphics card issue.
Actually I'm working from a 12.04 liveusb right now with compiz, and I have effects like desktop cube, and rotating cube and opacify and negative windows, every thing is wobbely and sexy, it's just perfect, except for that 12.04 isn't supported any more hence the upgrade. I'm using the same video card, and of course the nvidia-173 driver. But, compiz only works with gnome not with unity, interesting ...
 
Old 06-20-2014, 12:53 PM   #4
Gullible Jones
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... And this, folks, is what you get when you try to make 3D compositing desktops the default on a platform that does not yet have proper 3D support. Demand does not magically create supply.

@Prince Imhotep: Open source 3D support is good on most Intel cards, okay on ATI/AMD, and very iffy on nVidia. Properietary graphics support, in my experience, is buggy across the board. All told though, I have seen more crashes on Linux from graphics driver issues (both FOSS and properiatery) than from anything else.

(In fact, I've seen more Linux graphics stack crashes than Windows BSODs. That should tell you something.)

If you want reliability, you should never use a 3D desktop on Linux.

In fact, if you want reliability, you should never use 3D acceleration on Linux at all, for any reason. Seriously, X is rock solid if you stick to 2D. Start in with the 3D stuff and IMO you are guarenteed to see it pancake sooner or later.
 
Old 06-20-2014, 01:48 PM   #5
rokytnji
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How come Vesa driver was not tried? Old Nvidia and New Linux kernels are like oil mixing with water in my experience.

http://pastebin.com/J7U0Hizw

Edit: Also, no specs like

Code:
$ inxi -G
Graphics:  Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] ATI Wrestler [Radeon HD 6250]
           Display Server: X.Org 1.12.4 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 1366x768@60.0hz
           GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on AMD PALM GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 8.0.5
Mentioned either to see what kind of Nvidia and

Code:
$ uname -a
Linux biker 3.12-0.bpo.1-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.12.9-1~bpo70+1 (2014-02-07) i686 GNU/Linux
kernel we are discussing here either.

Last edited by rokytnji; 06-20-2014 at 01:53 PM.
 
Old 06-20-2014, 03:35 PM   #6
John VV
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Quote:
I'm using the same video card, and of course the nvidia-173 driver.
the old gforce "5" cards using the 173 driver are not supported any longer

you will have big problems trying to get a 3d accelerated desktop to work

the 173 driver will still run on CentOS 6.5 and debian stable
 
Old 06-20-2014, 04:43 PM   #7
Prince Imhotep
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I made a fresh liveusb to try the xorg.conf you kindly posted, yet it didn't work. At logon I got the "your system is running in low graphics mode", just like this one http://i.stack.imgur.com/AiwJH.png.

Quote:
Also, no specs
My apologies, and the specs.
Code:
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ glxinfo|grep -ie opengl|sed 's/OpenGL\ /\t\t/'
		vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
		renderer string: GeForce FX 5200/AGP/SSE2
		version string: 2.1.2 NVIDIA 173.14.39
		shading language version string: 1.20 NVIDIA via Cg compiler
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo uname -a
Linux ubuntu 3.13.0-24-generic #47-Ubuntu SMP Fri May 2 23:30:00 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Quote:
the old gforce "5" cards using the 173 driver are not supported any longer
I'm sure a guru like you has some idea in mind about a solution, or at least a definitive clear cause, not a general one. But thanks for the contribution anyway.
 
Old 06-20-2014, 04:48 PM   #8
jkirchner
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Prince Imhotep View Post
Thank you for your contribution.



Actually I'm working from a 12.04 liveusb right now with compiz, and I have effects like desktop cube, and rotating cube and opacify and negative windows, every thing is wobbely and sexy, it's just perfect, except for that 12.04 isn't supported any more hence the upgrade. I'm using the same video card, and of course the nvidia-173 driver. But, compiz only works with gnome not with unity, interesting ...
12.04 is supported until April 2017 per https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases
 
Old 06-20-2014, 05:03 PM   #9
Prince Imhotep
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Quote:
12.04 is supported until April 2017 per https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases
I do recall that I recieved a couple of notifications that precise has passed full support to some partial support, I don't really remember the exact content of these notifications.

But it's funny I didn't pass by the page you posted.
 
Old 06-20-2014, 05:21 PM   #10
jkirchner
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Prince Imhotep View Post
I do recall that I recieved a couple of notifications that precise has passed full support to some partial support, I don't really remember the exact content of these notifications.

But it's funny I didn't pass by the page you posted.
I am still running it on my older pc I use for media. Just got more updates yesterday.
 
Old 06-20-2014, 06:52 PM   #11
rokytnji
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Yeah, my /etc/X11/xorg.conf was set up for my custom minimal install on which I use Icewm, not Unity or Gnome-Shell.

Probably why you got that message window since you are running full boat Ubuntu.
Minimal is the only way Ubuntu makes it to my hardware anymore.
Mainly because my Hardware is old.

Edit: I forgot to mention. I had to go this route because with the initial X install. The driver Ubuntu originally gave me was nouveau (open source nvidia) and my screen would scramble out when running inxi script and lock up the computer. My Nvidia chip was not supported either because of the kernel so
I went Vesa on it since using Icewm.

Last edited by rokytnji; 06-20-2014 at 06:59 PM.
 
Old 07-03-2014, 11:29 AM   #12
vladimir1986
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I also had a laptop which required the 173 drivers..

they stopped supporting them years ago. You need to use Nouveau, and fine tune on whatever you need so it won't fail. It will be much less buggy.

You might want to change distro, or at least think on how to strip the one you are using to the maximum... Trust me, I always use old hardware and Ubuntu had been out of the radar very long ago. And Ubuntu takes too long to update its kernel sources and drivers! Try to compile a Kernel too.. Most probably the lastest Nouveau and xorg-nouveau/mesa are totally inxi friendly.

Good luck!
 
Old 07-10-2014, 10:15 PM   #13
ReaperX7
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Mate and Xfce are good desktops so yeah, if the heavier weight desktops aren't working, try the others. Lighter weight DEs and even Window Managers work better sometimes than the big name DEs do, and are more customizable.

The 5x00 series from Nvidia should be supported through Nouveau now fully. If you need a configuration tool, try DRIConf.
 
  


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