I have been unable to get either UBUNTU or SUSE to have a display that isn't covered with vertical streaks, and smears when a window is moved. I can run versions of Linux that use Xvesa with no problem on the same computer and monitor. Several people have tried to help and have reinstalled UBUNTU and SUSE both several times, tried changing the refresh rate but no luck.

Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux run great, just wanted access to more applications than they have available.

Jerry

Hi,

Welcome to LQ!

Did you check your '/var/log/Xorg' log?

Post your graphic card specs and the driver module used in ubuntu.
and parts of xorg.conf too

SIS 530/620 PCI/AGP VGA display adapter
Driver SIS
BusID PCI:1:0:0
Video Ram 4000 (k)

Monitor Generic
Option DPMS
Horiz 28-49
Vert 43-72


Note tried Horiz 30-60 and Vert 56-72 but that gave a blank screen and computer locked up.

From experiments with Puppy Linux and Xorg it looked like h=56 & v=71 would be a good combination but apparently not in UBUNTU.

Wish UBUNTU used Xvesa, sure a lot less trouble.

Jerry

You need to drop your color depth I do believe. Set default depth to 16 and see if that helps.

Color depth was already 16

Have tried different scan rates to no avail. Tried same values used in Puppy Linux, which worked fine, but not good with UBUNTU.

Maybe there is something else about UBUNTU and SUSE, different from PUPPY that messes up the display with noise streaks, may have to just give up!

Jerry

With that H-sync + V-sync you will get very low resolutions.Your card is 3D- capable with hw accln
Brand name + model of your monitor?

Try increasing the memory for your video buffer in the BIOS.

Then
#sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Well, I advise you to get a distribution based on either Ubuntu or SuSE (depends which you want to fix first), boot it and take a look at the Xorg.conf it's using, copy it somewhere and use it for your 'hard drive install'. It could fix your trouble. The /var/log/X* logs might help you troubleshoot it as well. You could also try to 'startx' and see what happens from a console.

Also make sure that it is using the vesa driver instead of sis

Regarding vesa driver and not sis - I see that UBUNTU did recognize the sis 530 driver, which I thought was a good thing. So how do I ges UBUNTU to recognize vesa ? I tried option F4 at boot-up and selected vga which I thought would equate to vesa but didn't see any difference.

In PUPPY LINUX and DAMN SMALL LINUX I have used Xvesa with 1024 x 760 and the display looks great, no resolution problem or streaks there!

Almost wonder if there is some kind of IRQ conflict as notice "noise" in the display when the hard drive is active, something that hasn't happened with Xvesa.

Thanks to all for trying to help but looks like I may have one of those unsolveable problems!

Jerry

The problem with that is that "only some specific monitors (like some Dell) " are known to fail autodetection in that specific way on Ubuntu/Suse.

W6LQR, for using vesa, simply select it from settings and also enable framebuffer ... at least

I've had the same problem with two different monitors, and don't have the problem with PUPPY LINUX eather using Xvesa or Xorg, guess "PUPPY" is smarter!

By the way that's in 1024 x 768 so I'm not talking about low resolution either.

So, what distro's support Xvesa and have good package management ??

Jerry

Jerry, I was having a similar problem until a few minutes ago. My graphics card wouldn't support xorg, so after everything loaded up, I got nothing, a blank screen, not even a mouse or anything.

I did a bunch of searching and found a site that describes a way to get ubuntu 8.04 to run in xvesa, and INSTALL in xvesa. It works for me, I just did it.

"First, select the boot option from your BIOS Screen to boot form your desired device.

1.
Insert the LiveCD and get to the menu with the splash screen.
2.
Choose “Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer” and click f6.
3.
Clicking F6 will bring up the Boot Options.
4.
Add the word xforcevesa to the end of the line and hit enter to start the LiveCD boot process.
5.
Install Ubuntu to your preferences.

"

the "xforcevesa" is the key word

the site was designed for a laptop, but I just did it on the new PC I built that has an older, less powerful graphics card.

Good luck, and I hope this helps.

P.S. I also ran PUPPY in xvesa no problem on the same system before I found this site. Cool distro, but not quite the same as Ubuntu.