Hi, all.
I’m contemplating installing 64 bit Ubuntu on a Poweredge 1850.
I booted from the 12.04 Live CD & it ran pretty well. The only odd thing was that alt-ctrl-arrow-keys did not function for the workspace switcher which is a pretty major fault.
I moved on to the 12.10 Live CD & Compiz had serious issues: apps wouldn’t launch, Compiz repeatedly crashed & it was basically unusable.
Upon subsequently Googling the problem, I saw that the Radeon drivers for 12.10 weren’t available as yet but there was a kind of muddled consensus that 12.04 was OK.
Whilst I realise that the 1850 is a server, I need a GUI for certain parts of this particular project so does anybody have any experience of running a Radeon 7000 card on the stock Unity release of 12.04 or is using a spin like LXDE or similar my best option?
Thanks for any help.
Cheers,
Phil…
#1 by Felix Miata on December 5th, 2012 - 2:32 pm
On 2012-12-05 19:47 (GMT) Phil Dobbin composed:
According to the thread ending with http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse/2012-10/msg00393.html it’s my suspicion that the problem isn’t Radeon generally but specifically to the 7000, which IIRC is mostly a tweaked R128, used in combination with that generation of Xorg. If that 7000 is in an AGP or PCI slot, can’t you put something newer in it? I have no problems with an only slightly newer 7500 that last I checked was plentiful for cheap on eBay. The 7500 was a popular option in Dell models sold to businesses.
Why not try a Live Debian, Fedora and/or openSUSE of similar age to 12.10 and
12.04 to see if the problems are missing?
#2 by Keith on December 5th, 2012 - 5:51 pm
I tried a 7700 card (7750) with 12.04 and 12.10 64bit and it was not good at all, the ATI drivers were worse as well. I ended up putting back in a 6570 with 2GB ram and it was like different computer, worlds apart
(in a good way). Granted I was wanting to setup multi-screens (3
screens) which is a challenge in itself with Linux, but things just worked so much better with the 6570 and NOT using the ATI drivers.
I think the 7000 is an older card as well? So that might cause some issues, perhaps look at a different card.
Good luck!
Cheers Keith
#3 by Phil Dobbin on December 5th, 2012 - 6:40 pm
I just checked & the 7000 is embedded & can’t be upgraded (& neither can the RAM) so I’m stuck with it.
It seems that if I want to use Ubuntu with this machine, I’ll have to use an alternate spin. I’m considering LXDE although I haven’t yet checked it out. So I’ll go have a look…
Thanks to everybody for their help.
Cheers,
Phil…
#4 by Felix Miata on December 5th, 2012 - 6:57 pm
On 2012-12-06 00:39 (GMT) Phil Dobbin composed:
Usually that old stuff can be upgraded with a PCI slot card regardless that there’s an embedded gfxchip. Your problem is probably just that Gnome 3
presumes all its users have or can easily have modern hardware. Modern bling is simply not compatible with older hardware. Time to do that LXDE and/or XFCE trial if a hardware change isn’t in your cards.
#5 by Phil Dobbin on December 6th, 2012 - 3:02 am
I’ve downloaded the Lubuntu 64-bit Live CD as well the alternate spin &
if it’s successful in its run, I’ll use the alternate spin to set up the LVM structure I need.
I find it a real pity that Ubuntu doesn’t offer a net install CD. I use the net install option on virtually every other distro (or, in certain cases, I set up a http install by copying the DVD to a directory on one of my servers). It’d make life (well, my life) a lot easier if they did I think
Cheers,
Phil…