Looks wierd
 

I downloaded Mint 15 - MATE and made an iso image DVD disk. Then rebooted with DVD in drive. The followinh happened
Splash screen with Linux Mint on
Then Automatic boot in 9, 8, 7 etc secs
Then Linus Mint 15 in Courier with 4 dots underneath
After 2/3 mins screen turned black, covered in white U letters with Welcome to Linux in background
Then wide red and black horizontal bands
Then a more graphic screen with 2 Linux Mint logos on green and white bands, top one a bit fuzzy. Cursor has a red box around it. Icons for Computer, Mint Home and Install Linux mint 'ghosted' with background showing through
Firefox loads, again ghosted, but cannot access internet even though wifi light lit on computer.

Computer is Fujitsu Seimens Amilo L7320 1.7 GHz and 960 RAM

What is going wrong?

Want to try Linux as computer freezes in Windows XP after about 20 mins.

Help appreciated.

Sounds like a hardware problem, if XP and Linux are both botched. Graphic card maybe?

The graphics card seems to work fine with Windows. Also the computer has stopped freezing in Windows as well, so I'm staying with Windows as I can't load Linux. Shame, I really wanted to try it out.

Looks like the graphics card support - the driver under Linux. Quick google shows some old posts that managed to get it working with a bit of effort. I'm surprised Mint 15 doesn't have the necessary support, it's generally pretty good.

I agree that it's likely a video driver issue.

You may be able to pass some video parameters to the Mint DVD on boot.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to do this. But that's likely the place to look if you want to continue with Mint.

I did it with Knoppix once, years ago; I was able to add them at the command line before starting the boot.

linux distro that works with L7320
 

I burnt over 30 different linux cd and dvd's trying to find one that would work out of the box without having to amend settings for the graphics card. Two work , all the rest either do not load or have the striped screen you described

the two that work are Slax and Zorin os9 Lite. I recommend the latter as it is very easy to get your head round moving from Windows - it has windows look alike mode and a Mac OS look alike. The wifi control (Fn+F2 also works)

Since installing Zorin os9 lite My not so old but annoying Fjitsu Siemens Amilo L7320 gw has been given a new lease of life

hope this helps

Roobic

Hi Roobic, This post is over a year and a half old (August 2013) so I'd reckon the OP has got a solution. It might be better to contribute to newer issues rather than dig up old stuff.

Welcome to LinuxQuestions by the way! :)

Play Bonny!

:hattip:

That was a rather useful post from Roobic. It has solved my problem - thank you!

I know this thread is very old but it is THE best page for getting the Amilo L7320GW or L7320 to display properly. I took a tip from earlier in thread and had been using Zorin Lite 11 which displays properly out of the box at a resolution of 1280 x800.

I've tried Zorin Lite 12 which installs but (in common with ALL other linux distros I've tried) it only displays with really low screen resolution.

Is there a way to export the drivers / setting from Zorin 11 lite and make Zorin 12 lite display properly?

I have been using linux for years but I'm not great with code so would like a little hand holding rather than just general guidelines.

Hi L73210GW,

Welcome to LQ!

I don't think you can take the drivers out of one distro version and use them in another, unless the versions are next to each other. Even then it might not work. Drivers get old after a while, and they don't work with newer kernels.

If you are lucky it's simply a matter of the (correct) driver not loading due to a conflict - reasonably common with (Broadcom - ugh) wifi drivers. Does Zorin 12 video work ok from a liveCD session ? - sometimes the installed systems is different for no obvious reason.
From both systems (12 liveCD is fine) install inxi and post the output of this.

Thanks for both of these replies. I didn't think to try live CD but it did display better than the full 12 lite install but less well then the Zorin lite 11 install which I put on a spare HDD.

Zorin 11 lite
Graphics: Card: VIA CN700/P4M800 Pro/P4M800 CE/VN800 Graphics [S3 UniChrome Pro]
Display Server: X.Org 1.17.2 drivers: openchrome (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
Resolution: 1280x800@60.19hz
GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 3.6, 128 bits)
GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 11.0.2

Zorin* ‬12* ‬lite from HDD
Graphics:* ‬Card:* ‬VIA CN700/P4M800* ‬Pro/P4M800* ‬CE/VN800* ‬Graphics* [‬S3* ‬UniChrome Pro*]
Display Server:* ‬X.Org* ‬1.18.4* ‬drivers:* ‬fbdev* (‬unloaded:* ‬vesa*)
Resolution:* ‬640x480*@‬73.00hz
* ‬GLX Renderer:* ‬Gallium* ‬0.4* ‬on llvmpipe* (‬LLVM* ‬3.8,* ‬128* ‬bits*)
GLX Version:* ‬3.0* ‬Mesa* ‬12.0.6

Zorin* ‬12* ‬lite from Live CD*
Graphics:* ‬Card:* ‬VIA CN700/P4M800* ‬Pro/P4M800* ‬CE/VN800* ‬Graphics* [‬S3* ‬UniChrome Pro*]
Display Server:* ‬X.Org* ‬1.18.4* ‬drivers:* ‬vesa* (‬unloaded:* ‬fbdev*)
Resolution:* ‬1024x768*@‬61.00hz
* ‬GLX Renderer:* ‬Gallium* ‬0.4* ‬on llvmpipe* (‬LLVM* ‬3.8,* ‬128* ‬bits*)
GLX Version:* ‬3.0* ‬Mesa* ‬1

Just seeing these outputs begs the question: is it possible to install the OpenChrome driver with the new kernel and how would I go about that. Second best would be to set the display like the live CD but even that would be an improvement.

By using the inxi -G as suggested it pointed in the direction of finding openchrome drivers.

On another site they suggested this code which works!

This driver didn't install until I'd run:

and after installing it kicked in automatically after a reboot.

The laptop is now in reasonable condition with 2GB or Ram and a 2.0 GHz cpu after installing with force PAE with Zorin Lite 12.1. There are suggestions on another site if anyone is Looking for VIA ChromotionHD 2.0 driver, and wants a more up to date version of openchrome.

Glad you got it sorted - sorry, I missed your earlier response.