Video-related issues with old Nvidia quadro
 

Hi, this is my first post! :-)

I've tried, as I seem to do every year or so, to get started with Linux, and I've always had problems that made me give up. This time I'm putting in more effort as I really want to get it working.

I have an old dell with an nvidia quadro NVS 280 SD video card. I have tried Ubuntu and Debian (with gnome desktop), and both have been unusable for video-card-related reasons.

Ubuntu was displaying menus and other graphic elements like windows, etc. at about 2 frames per second (quite literally). When I tried to update drivers other problems ensued, so I decided to try Debian, which is still currently installed on the machine.

However, Debian is missing characters and graphic elements all over the desktop, to the extent that it's unusable.

I'd be grateful if anyone could suggest how to get up and running with a version of Linux that I can use with this machine - even if it doesn't have a graphic interface, or has a really stripped down one - or how to solve the issue with my current setup.

My main intention is to use this as a webserver on a home office network for the sites I work on locally, as I want to learn more about linux hosting management.

yes, it indeed sounds like a graphic card related problem.
what linux do you have installed right now?
can you boot into recovery or text console?
if not, consider installing sth without a gui, e.g. arch linux, install appropriate drivers, then install gui.

search your package database for nvidia and/or nouveau, should bring up some graphic driver. if it's not installed, install it and reboot. if it is installed, maybe the kernel doesn't load it for some reason, so try to load the appropriate module (search the web) with modprobe or insmod.
after that, can you start your gui without problems?
then you have to make that change persistent, which is done somewhere in /etc/... sorry, don't remember now. find it on the web, this forum,...

well for a old qudro
and any thing older than a gforce4
You need the NOT SUPPORTED any more 96 driver
--- the 32 bit
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/96.43.23/

and that old and unsupported driver MUST HAVE !!!!! xorg < 1.12 !!!!!
xorg 1.13 and 1.14 CAN NOT !!!!!! be used

only 1.12 or OLDER !!!!

and THAT will cause all kinds of problems

you MUST downgrade xorg to a old version
and everything that needs it


Centos 5.10 uses 1.10
CentOS 6.5 uses 1.13
so xorg in 6.5 MUST be downgraded to the version in the 6.3 repos


fedora is even worse
( as in will not work )

Ubuntu 13.10
-- unknown but i suspect that you would have a VERY hard time downgrading to 1.12

Debian 7 'wheezy' and newer will be using gnome 3, which is not friendly to older video cards and/or dodgy drivers.

Ubuntu isnt using gnome, its unity, and depending on the version its even heavier than gnome 3.

Could be due to an old video card and unity/gnome 3, or it could be due to the drivers being used.

You will probably be using 'nouveau', the open source nVidia drivers. Try installing the closed source drivers. Debian install instructions here-

https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers

I would have guessed that the old NVS 280 would use the 173.XX drivers, but oldly nVidia says it can use the 304/310+ drivers.

BTW, IMO both gnome 3 and unity are not great deskltop choices. I'd try Xfce or Lxde.

Thank you all for your help.

In the end I decided to get my hands properly dirty and go for Ubuntu Server 12.04 and do everything via the command line, so that takes care of the graphic issues for the moment anyway.

Cheers!

i have just recently installed SliTaz on an older laptop and i'm very fascinated with it.
also, i'm convinced it's a pretty serious distro for really old hardware.
give it a try!
a possibly related forum topic: http://forum.slitaz.org/topic/slitaz...n-free-drivers