I've been wasting some dvds trying out some distros and thought I'd post some unexpected installation failures. First my computer, Dell Precision 690 with Quadro FX 3450/4000, vintage 2008, is ok because the following 64 bit installed fine: opensuse 12.*, Lxle 14.04, kbuntu 13.*, lubuntu, latest Manjaro, etc. Now for the failures: latest mint 17 locks up on color pattern booting from live CD, bypasses options and goes into ten second countdown, and older mint 14 dvd same problem. Latest Solydk may or may not get past color pattern screen or jumps over boot options. I got as far as partition setup and the windowing was all messed up so couldn't proceed, saw a bit of the partitioning screen which was definitely not for a beginner as it offered no auto function. Next failure was Opensuse 13.2 installed all the way but windowing was all messed up so couldn't interact with menus, clicking blind. Next went down to opensyse 13.1 stable, exactly the same. Why are these distros regressing? I almost stuck with Manjoro if not for some software limitations like no Steam support and a lot of failed installs from AUR. Will probably put kubuntu back on. Lxle looking very good but Steam wouldn't open and wanted the better full features apps.

good way to test distirbutions is to burn them to usb flash with unetbootin app instead of using cd-s.

The reason why they're regressing is that the card is old and the new versions of distros just aren't getting tested with it.

On the whole, it's usually quicker to find a solution to a problem with a distro you like than to endlessly search for a distro which lacks the problem and has the other features you need. Manjaro certainly has Steam: the last time I tried it, Steam was installed by default.

One post about Mint
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=63106

A source for a driver
https://driverscollection.com/?H=GeF...SS=Linux%20x86

Not sure about the Nvidia site being able to scan and give the best driver (see previous poster's link), will probably come up with an approximation. I am told some of these are just repackaged nauveau drivers. Can't see them doing fresh drivers for old cards anyway.

Have you tried Debian? Will probably run old cards ok. Debian will run steam but I believe it is not straight forward, depending on what game you want to run. Still it is likely to support older graphics cards in it's untweaked state.

Fred.

I'm sorry to start a post then have to be away so soon. I'm back and thanks. First I totally boggled the computer and video card names. I edited the original post as follows: "Dell Precision 690 with Quadro FX 3450/4000". I was away from the computer on mobile when I first posted.

I originally was musing over hard ware support/testing as well but I am not entirely convinced.

1.The Quadro FX 3450/4000 is listed as supported under Nouveau and is a very common cad/workstation card. pci-express slot.

2. The computer is a common workstation class, Intel 5000 class chipset, 70 lb. quad E3540 zeon,4 gigs ram, 2.3 ghz processors. I believe it can take another processor to make it an eight core, 4 gigs of ram. This is far and away my best box, all the rest are older AGP P4s and as of last winter took all the distros I threw at them.

3. The dvd's listed I listed above worked fine on the same vintage HP Pavillion AMD 64, ATI pci-ecpress 200 intergrated card. On this HP At I was able to use the live cd's for Solydx and Mint 17 Cinnamon and latest Manjaro. The OpenSuse 13.* s weren't live but I'm sure they would install to a functional desktop. There must be a pattern could be homed in upon here. Observe the following:

A. Lxle 14.04, lubuntu, Both non-KDE, both ubuntu based, work.

B. Manjaro with KDE works. Also I was able to switch to the non-open Nvidia from the Manjoro/Nouveau driver so you can see Nouveau likes the card.

C. Mint and Solydx, and Kubuntu, all KDE, all Ubuntu based (I think)fail.

D. OpenSuse KDE installs but has an unusable desktop. Interestingly the desktop abberations appeared identically in SolydX and openSuse. They have KDE in common but not the OS.

E. Mint, SolydX (mostly), and Kubuntu won't install and all present identical screen patters, first the entire screen is filled with vertical multi-colored striped then, after a few moments the same pattern shrinks up to the upper left corner of the screen and a tiny message" please wait loading" or maybe just 'please wait" , and they freeze at that point stilling displaying the stripes. OpenSuse dosen't do this.

Possible commonalities:
1. All failures very recent KDE. KDE fail on all distros except Manjaro. KDE possible cause
2. Two ubuntu based non-kde work so KDE also possible cause.
3. SolydX and OpenSuse failure in exactly the same way in SolydX and OpenSuse. KDE in common again.
4. Solydx, Mint, and Kubuntu fail in the same way with the early install phase colored vertical stripes. KDE in common.

Strongest and almost only commonality is KDE, only Manjaro breaks the pattern, good job Manjaro!

Now that's the about the best I can deduce as I don't know any detailed info here.

I did install Vista on a separate disk once I converted it from GPT to MBR. No issues at all so no hardware faults.
The hardware is only 6-7 years old. From previous experience that is not very old for Linux.

If any one sees a pattern here please holler.

FYI Finally I installed Vista first on a separate HD and then disconnected that drive and installed Manjaro on a second HD. I didn't want Grub to know about Vista as I've had some bad luck losing both dual boot os's due to Grub. I use bios boot selection which works great so far. Grub smelled out the Vista install after both HD's were live but does not ask to boot from it which is what I wanted. It was a lot of work getting Vista and all patched up, don't want to lose it. Manjaro installed sweetly and that is a nice rolling release so hopefully the two will live long with out reinstalls. I really liked the SolydK previewing it on the HP Pavillion will probably install it there. It's different and very nice looking. Mint 17 Cinnamon looks great too. Kubuntu pretty standard. Manjaro very nice. Yes Manjaro had Steam but the app window would disappear after the login screen. I tried installing it from the steam website and it's installer offered a .deb package and said only Ubuntu based os suported so I don't know Manjaro/Arch would be able to run it. I'll try Steam again

All though I don't have to figure this out I'd sure like too.
Thanks