http://wiki.xfce.org/howto/customize-menu in case anyone's interested.
Thanks to this depression the politicians say is we're not in the middle of, I had to move to America's bug factory (Kentucky). Since money is tight I'll have to make do with the card I have now for a bit longer. I'd like to thank all of you who have helped me figure out what the problem is. I'll keep these emails so when I can get another card, I'll have some ideas about where to get one. Try to imagine living in Lukeville and not being able to make a quick trip to Fry's or your neighborhood computer store on a whim.
It's two hours later here so I'm off to bed. Derek On 11/13/2011 08:10 PM, Michael Butash wrote:
And let the list know you've defused what you could. :) -mb On 11/13/2011 07:51 PM, Derek Trotter wrote:I'll keep this in mind when I get some spare cash. I tried uninstalling kde and installing xfce. This worked, but I couldn't find an easy way to edit the menu in xfce. I looked around in synaptic and stumbled onto kde-minimal. I tried that and so far it's not giving me any trouble. Thanks for your help and suggestions. Derek On 11/12/2011 02:50 PM, Michael Butash wrote:I'd stay with nvidia honestly, i have an ati currently and aside from the fact it supports 6 monitors, it rather sucks (drivers me thinks). Check out newegg, I had a friend buy a newer chipset in agp from there about 3 months ago for an old box - like a gt220 or something for 30 bucks. Those should be ok. -mb On 11/12/2011 02:28 PM, Derek Trotter wrote:I agree that getting rid of the card is the best solution. Money is short right now, but getting rid of that card is something I'll do as soon as possible. The motherboard has one agp slot and several pci slots, but no pci-e slots. What video cards would you suggest? Thanks On 11/12/2011 01:20 PM, Michael Butash wrote:Ah, umm... I think "plasma" is their equivalent if i remember right - i'd see if kdm has a "classic" mode too to disable any direct rendering. Sorry, I haven't used kde in a good 5 years to know. Honestly, you might be money ahead to replace it. Honestly, those 8400's are a problem and a half from what I'd found. -mb On 11/12/2011 01:03 PM, Derek Trotter wrote:I don't have gnome installed. I've got Kubuntu, but I'll try and figure it out. thanks On 11/12/11, Derek Trotter<[email protected]> wrote:Thanks. On 11/12/2011 1:48, Michael Butash wrote:If you run in "ubuntu classic" or more extreme, failsafe x mode, youcan avoid the gpu being enabled immediately. That's how I came to figure out the gpu was wonky on my laptop, only after I enabled compiz did the display freak. When you go to login in gdm or lightdm, selectit there. That'll cripple compiz from rendering the desktop againstthe gpu. If you get that far, try running glgears and see if it crashes - that'll invoke the gpu. -mb On 11/11/2011 11:45 PM, Derek Trotter wrote:Is there any way to make linux not hit the gpu? On 11/11/2011 21:54, Michael Butash wrote:XP's desktop doesn't hit the gpu - this started in the redheadedbastard known as vista. Most xp functions and codecs don't either.Linux will by default now with compiz, video rendering, lots of things. -mb On 11/11/2011 09:49 PM, Derek Trotter wrote:This is something I hadn't heard before. Thanks for letting me know. If this is the problem, there's one thing I don't understand. Why do I not have any problems when the machine is running XP? On 11/11/2011 21:28, Michael Butash wrote:You might be dealing with hardware issues. I've not seen that kind ofproblem in my laptop with that chip under solid use for 4 yearsuntil it gave up the ghost. I had an 8400 in my dell laptop, and those had serious and well known (read: class-action lawsuit) on that chipset for defective chips. BGA chip use began that generation for nvidia and ati, and they're notorious horrible at popping off and losingconductivity also into the 9600 series. Read about a like issue,something called RRoD in xbox360 or YLoD in ps3's for the same reason... When my laptop began dying from this, 2d desktop would work great until something hit the gpu, and artifacting would begin instantly butstill *kinda* work. Sounds like playing a video is hitting vdpau(most video engines default to using this if available, thus hitting gpu shaders, and locking. Desktop compositing probably likewise causes this with complexity due to hitting gpu. That kind of hard lock could be driver related, but sketchy hardware is often the cause too, especially with that genre of gpu. -mb On 11/11/2011 01:52 PM, Stephen wrote:If you want to try an alternate Graphics card i do have some AGP cards floating about still. On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 11:23 AM, Derek Trotter <[email protected]> wrote:Good idea, but the motherboard does not have a video card onboard. The bios does have a setting to set the primary video adapter as AGP or PCI. It's set to PCI. Thanks for taking the time to write your suggestion. Derek On 11/11/2011 07:44 AM, Stephen wrote:Something to consider in some CMOS you can have settings thatchoose a preferred video card, and sometimes on-board video is not disabled fully. some Intel boards are notorious for this. Look in your settings and see what you can find. this may help. I had one helluva time with PCI-e graphics and Ubuntu for a while back in the 8.xx days with this. On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 4:38 PM, Derek Trotter<[email protected]> wrote:It happens whether or not I'm playing a video. Most of the videos I watch are not flash videos. They're mostly avi files with xvid, but some were mpeg1 or mpeg2. I used vlc to play them. On 11/10/2011 16:32, Dazed_75 wrote: All of your issues sound like they happen when playing videos. Is that true or are there other times as well? As far as what else it could be, there could be lots of possibilities but they might be hard to track down to elements that are common to Ubuntu,Kubuntu, and Fedora. If it is localized to playing videos, Iwould certainly be suspicious of the command line based underpinnings the players might use. Oh, and are the videos Flash based or not?If you are coming to the meeting tonight and can come to therestaurant after, someone there may be able to help. On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 4:21 PM, Derek Trotter<[email protected]> wrote:On 11/10/2011 16:10, Dazed_75 wrote:Try looking to see if you are using the open source genericnvidia driveror the proprietary one. I am not sure where that is in theKubuntu menusbut look for something in System, or Administration with aname that isprobably something about Hardware. It should run a programthat looks to see if there are proprietary drivers you might choose to use. When I first installed the os I noticed the problem with the driver it came with. I checked and found where it suggested a proprietary driver and offered one other. I chose the one that was recommended. The bug showed itself with the driver that came with the install and the one I installed later.I AM curious though if you have some particular reason forsuspecting itis due to you having that video card since a screen freezecould be something above the driver level.I've had that card for about 2 years while the machine wasrunning XP and didn't have this problem. It only showed itself after I installed the latest Ubuntu and Kubuntu version as well as the other latest linux flavors I mentioned earlier. Fedora 15 was the worst. It would freeze the screen as soon as I started playing a video. The others would let me watch at least for a few minutes before the screen froze. Also if it's not a driver problem, what else could it be? On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 3:59 PM, Derek Trotter<[email protected]> wrote:I have an NVIDIA Geforce 8400 GS card that plugs into a PCI slot. I have no problems with it in XP, but when I installed Kubuntu 11.10 I found a problem. Occasionally the screen freezes. I can't switch to a console.Also I can't kill the x server. I know the machine has notcompletely locked up because when I have audio playing, it keeps playing even though the screen has frozen. None of the usual means to shut down a machine work.The only thing I can do is hit the reset button, press thepower switch for several seconds until the machine shuts off, or pull the plug. I'veencountered this on Ubuntu 11.10, Kubuntu 11.10, Mepis 11and Fedora 15. Iinstalled the LTS verson of Kubuntu 10 and haven't had anyproblems with it. Does anyone have any idea what's going on or how to fix it? Thanks --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss-- Dazed_75 a.k.a. Larry The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive. - Thomas Jefferson --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - [email protected]To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss--------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - [email protected]To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss-- Dazed_75 a.k.a. Larry The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive. - Thomas Jefferson --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - [email protected]To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss--------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - [email protected]To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss--------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss--------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
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