When I'm surfing the web and messaging via Gaim, my video crashes. Like, the colors just crap out on me and the desktop becomes impossible to use. It almost looks like when you're trying to turn on your TV and you don't have cable - the "snow." That's the only way I can explain it. My video care is fairly new - I got it in the summer. I am thoroughly disappointed in Ubuntu. I liked it, until it started crashing and there seems to be no immediate "fix" for said crashes. If you're going to tell me to install a fresh copy of Ubuntu, then don't even bother replying - that's out of the question.

Has this happened to anyone else, and if it did, what did you do?

Thank you,
Sir Loin

It might be usefull to tell us which videocard you use, the motherboard (does it have onboard video that might interfere) and which driver you use for it.

I had problems with a Biostar CRU51/M9 (GForce 6100 video) while using the vesa or nv driver. Mostly random freezes.
The nvidia driver from the repositories fixed these issues. I now only have the snowy effect that you describe occasionally when the PC comes out of screensaver.

What did you do to make it crash? Installed something, updates?

Are you sure you don't have hardware problems?

The fact that your card is new and you say the desktop colors go all weird - you could have a bad card from the factory?

Tried other distros? Windows? If you dual-boot, the surefire test to see if it hardware (or ubuntu's fault) is to boot into Windows and see if it works. I've used this technique a few times to quickly detect definitely bad hardware - if it fails in Linux, test in Windows. If it fails in BOTH, you've got bad hardware...

Windows works fine.

Video Card : ATI Technologies Inc Radeon 9250 (RV280) 256MB

You might try this:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthre...&highlight=dri

I have no idea what that is. I'm a newb. In layman's terms please.

I crashed AGAIN! Ubuntu is African for "SHITTY." I can't count the number of times I crashed whilst downloading a very good porn from BangBros. Ubuntu is the first distro I've actually performed a full install of because I liked it so much, but, apparently, it doesn't like me. I thought Linux was the OS to fall back on, but it seems as if Windows XP is since I'm typing this post from my XP partition since Ubuntu isn't stable enough to even SURF THE WEB on. God I hate Windows...

Sir Loin: Are you for real? It seems like all your threads start with "I'm just trying to watch porn." Then, at some point you say "It works fine in windows." I'm not sure if this is meant to be some kind of joke, but its not all that amusing.

If you are really interested in clearly identifying a problem and reading instructions on how to fix it, there are plenty of people here who would try to help.

If they're people like you, they will just comment on my posts and NOT try to help.

Hmm - ATI. I've had some bad experiences with ATI and AMD. I know there are Linux drivers for ATI cards available. Maybe you might want to surf the ATI site (with Windows...) and check if you can find the drivers? Personally, I never buy ATI video cards or AMD CPUs - Nvidia + Intel is the way to go.

I've got a Nvidia 7950 based card and IMO Nvidia has good Linux support via their unified Linux drivers. I just downloaded the drivers and my card works perfectly (OpenGL, the works) under 2.6.18.1 kernel in Fedora Core 6.

You easiest steps would be:

1. Get the ATI Linux drivers.
2. Install them.
3. See if the problem goes away.

Alternatively, spring for an el-cheapo Nvidia card (see if you can find a secondhand 5200 or something) - even if you can just use it to test. (Maybe a local computer shop has some trash they want to throw away). Have you got AGP or PCI-E? If AGP, put in the Nvidia card and see if you still have the problem. I'm willing to bet that the Nvidia card would work right out of the so-called box, with no snowing, even with the "standard" X-window VESA driver... If you then load the Nvidia drivers, it might work even better. ATI? Huh...

BTW, "ubuntu" means peace and brotherhood (I'm an Afrikaner, living in Africa). Ironic, isn't it?

Did you install the drivers? Did you check the links with regards to ATI on http://www.ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=138 ?

Further you might want to check the logs in /var/log. They might reveal something.

Further you might have a HW problem. The Ubuntu CD contains memtest86. Boot from it an run the memory test so that memory can be excluded as a possible cause.

I'm sorry, thats just funny.

It does sound like a driver/hardware issue.

IGF

The link I posted is to a How-To for installing ATI drivers. I have never seen one more Layman that it. Follow the steps one at a time, not skipping anything and it will work.