Kubuntu / Compiz issues on Lappy

FatRakoon

FatRakoon

FatRakoon

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Ok...

I finally got hold of a LapTop thats quick enough to have Compiz Fuzion running.

Now, I have been twiddling about with Kubunu latey, and this is now my linux of choice so I would rather stick to it.

The LapTop is an Acer Aspire 1680, 1GB/60GB / ATI 9700 Mobility

I have it running seemingly spot on, except for one issue and that is, that the screen randomly decides to display everything in black, or the screen seems to go off anyway?

Its fine if I use the kwin WM but not the Compiz WM.... Sometimes Im ok for a few minutes, sometimes a lot less but nothing seems to be the kicker, its all random.

Im using the ATI driver and catalysts that Kubuntu offered to me.

Anyone know of this issue or is it just me?

Oh, for what its worth, I have also gone via the Sabayon 3.5 setup, as thats what on my Main Linux Desktop PC and that does the same thing.
 
Ok, update on that sodding LapTop.

I downlaoded the latest ATI Drivers for it, I removed the old ones, got it running on basic drivers and the Moouse buttons stopped working ( Randomly ) - Now I do have this issue on a fresh install but I had forgotten it because with the ATI Drivers in, the Mouse buttons work fine... The Mouse buttons I mean are both an external USB Mouse and the Pad thingy do the same thing.

Anyway, I reinstalled the full ATI Drivers again, and now it wont start inti KDE anymore?

I still have the graphical login and the Mouse and buttons are fine, and I can go into FAILSAFE Command line and sure enough, I can launch anything from there or least I have run konqueror and kmail just fine, but I just cannot get into KDE?

I have of course tried aticonfig including --initialise and -f but nothing?

I notice that after installing the ATI Cats, it said that it would do a basic config of the drivers but its never done anythign after that, hence me trying aticonfig

Im kind of stuck there.

I had 3 choices then...

1 = No ATI Drivers but faulty mouse buttons

2 = Kubuntus own ATI Drivers no 3D but everything works seemingly fine

3 = ATI Drivers and have a 3D option, working mouse but blank screens all the time.

Anyway, I have a Radeon 9700Pro upstairs and so I threw Kubuntu onto that for testing and thats running absolutely brilliantly, but this LapTop is just a sodding nightmare to get right.

Come on guys, someone must know somehtign on how I might cure it?

Oh... One other thing...

I know I am missing somethign here, but the 3D Desktop cube only shows as a flat single screen... It rotates as it should ( CTRL-ALT-MOUSE) , but its not a transparent cube, just the one flat screen.... I have set it as it is on my Sabayon Compiz PC and the Kubuntu with the 9800Pro and they are fine and all *** settings are the same as they are on the lappy, so WTF? - I know its capable of it because I had it the other day.

Buggering things eh?
 
Something tells me that you are an nVidia user?

Cant say Im surprised by your responce, but a little annoyed though!

My first experience with Linux was using Matrox Cards, then nVidia, and ATI have been very poor. While with windows, I have beenusing ATI more then nvidia lately ( not for any particular reason other than I came across the ATI hardware in a price I was happy with before nVIDIA ) and I went the X800, X1800XT, X1900XT path

More recently I am enjoying Linux and indeed I have made it my mission in life that my laptop will be linux and not windows...EVER!

My last laptop was rock solid with Linux but while it had a very useable XP2600, it had S3 Virge Graphics and was about ascapable as 3D Graphics as a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, but this one is now very capable of most things ( to a point )

Now, I am digressing again, but it came to about 6:30 this morning and I was still working at it, and so I decided that enough was enough and that I was going to give another distro a try as I was running ubuntu to death.

SuSE 10.3 is nice, I have lost it with Mandriva and I have Fedora9 here and I have not tried Fedore since Core 2, so, I fired up the Live Disk... KDE = Good, I dont like Gnome, Graphics are good, Audio is there, Wireless? - hck, even that worked, so stuff it, put the Proper DVD in and install it.

My god, now here we have a turn up for the books, but I hate gnome, and yet its running gnome now and I am not going to bother with KDE, this thing is great... Compiz seems to be massively cut down, but Istill get the wibbly windows and the cube desktop thingy, but above all, its bloody fast.

I think that will stick to it.

Now, I have come across a couple of issues with it, namely the App Installer seems to takmonths to gather itsinfo and this it seems is because its getting all itsinfo from the web for each and every click I do?

The mouse buttons have also frozen again... Only once mind you, so, this might very well be that its waiting for the web update stuff, I dont know, but either way, its definitely better than ubuntu so far ( So far with a pinch of salt ok )
 
Ah you've come across the devil that is compiz! i dont think iv ever made that cube work! *crys* even on my old nvidia machine! :(

I was trying to do the same thing last year and eventually came to the conclusion that that cube just isnt worth it.

On a slightly different note, you might find the interesting problem with laptop ati cards is that your ati card in the laptop probably isnt quite standard (they do the same with the main windows drivers not supporting mobile cards due to laptop disparity) and so the drivers pleb about not really knowing whats going on :(, again this is more ati's fault (though desktop wise they are getting better) so i wouldnt feel too bad (nvidia has similar issues with laptop cards, we had to do some magic to get them to work on a mac book pro last year through xp with basically the same problem)

Anyway, im impressed you got a good suse going! (internet points to you) iv never managed to get a clean download of the install media :s
 
No, Fedora is running right now.

Come across another issue that I am absolutely disgusted at...

I tried to open a video to try out Video playback, and I was presented with 3 options...

1 - Download THIS for 30 Euros
2 - Download THAT for 17eu
3 - Download THE OTHER for 7eu

I mean... WHAT?

No free codecs for playing back video?

Dont get me wrong here, I have all of a sudden fallen head over heels in love with Fedora, but if I cannot get rid of such messages and I cannot get it to play everything I want it to, then Im afraid that it has to go!

But yes, I will be giving SuSE a run, but SuSE 11 is KDE4 and Im just not happy with KDE 4 just yet... I dont like the stupid carp around the Icons among other things, so I will go with 10.3 as thats just right I feel.

Or maybe OpenGEU again? - that was so un-windows that it kept the family off it.
 
Stick mint on it.

The reason I changed over to Nvidia was because of the grief I got with ati. I put Ubuntu on my mates Asus A4 laptop that uses ati mobility graphics and it works great .. apart from google earth .. You have to keep moving the cursor or the screen goes to a 3 inch black bar over the programme. ( Naturally the ****** thing works ok in WinXP - Ubuntu is installed via wubi).
 
Sorry i miss read you with the suse :s (had just woken up ish) That codec thing sounds ridiculous! (angry email to fredora for missing the opensource point...) especially as most the free codecs work well.

I say give gentoo a bash if your feeling like a bit of linux fun though (the guide book is well documented but it jsut takes a while to get going)
 
Outcast said:
Stick mint on it.

The reason I changed over to Nvidia was because of the grief I got with ati. I put Ubuntu on my mates Asus A4 laptop that uses ati mobility graphics and it works great .. apart from google earth .. You have to keep moving the cursor or the screen goes to a 3 inch black bar over the programme. ( Naturally the ****** thing works ok in WinXP - Ubuntu is installed via wubi).
Click to expand...

Well, right now, Fedora is doing exactly what the *buntus did...

It either crashes on a mouse click ( Although the Built-in pad crashes on the Login Screem, if I use a Mouse, its ok ) or give it 5 or 10 minutes and it blanks out.

Not only that but I am unable to play a video or an MP3 without it asking for cash, so Fedora has to go.

Im gutted about that I have to be honest because Im in love with it... Funny that.

MINT... Perhaps...

I have MINT-5-R1 here that I tried out a month or two ago on the XPM2600 and it ran well enough, but I was not exactly impressed with it... Sure though, I will try it out before ditching the idea completely.


pingwing said:
Sorry i miss read you with the suse :s (had just woken up ish) That codec thing sounds ridiculous! (angry email to fredora for missing the opensource point...) especially as most the free codecs work well.

I say give gentoo a bash if your feeling like a bit of linux fun though (the guide book is well documented but it jsut takes a while to get going)
Click to expand...

Agreed, I mean, Kubuntu plays back 100% of whatever I throw at it and thats guaranteed all free codecs etc.

Gentoo - Yeah, I love Gentoo, my first go of it was years ago when I compiled it onto my K6-500 and it took me 2 weeks just to get any WM onto it, and I think it was over a month for KDE.

I just want a simple life though these days.. I cannot be bothered to have to config everything and gentoo, and slack are just too much trouble for me.

Lovely days. Gentoo's most used command is man I recon.
 
AH???

Erm, Ok, so last night, I set about on a mission ocne again... I dug out a load of distros.

Gentoo 2008.0
Mint 5
SuSE 10.3
SuSE 11.0
Mandriva ( Few flavours although they are basically the same - One/Spring etc )

And I got them setup and they all run fine but they all have the very same issues..

The Mouse buttons dont wotk on the pointer thingy but do on an external mouse.
When I install ATI drivers, the mouse pointers work properly, but then the screen goes black at random times ( Many times it stays fine until I press the button ? )

So...

I have given up with Linux on this Laptop ( Even though in the drivers I downloaded, there are Linux drivers? and thats from ACER? )

I thn went and put Windows onto i, and guess what?

Yup, BSOD... Caused by.... ATI Drivers!

Oh my god, what now?

I am using the Supplied CD and the drivers from there rather than the Downloaded ones and I get BSODS???

I really hate this frigging LapTop now.

And people ask my why I hate laptops? - here is why!
 
Done that.

Although, I will add... And if anyone can verify this for me, bt in the BIOS there is a suspend to disk option... Anyway, its does in fect say DSIK and not DISK

One small error I know but if they missed an error like that, which is clearly visible, then they might also have missed a real error in the BIOS Data?

I have tried downloading the latest BIOS however its the same as the one in there now and it wont update so Im kind of stuck a little there.
 
Least helpful suggestion ever but jsut throw it out a second story window, that'll teach it good....

Anyway have you tried any other touchpad drivers?? I had an acer travelmate (not my mate as i hated using it) and it was a little funny with the touchpad unless i let the os do what it wanted (even happened in ubuntu)
 
I have not done anythign about the TouchPad?

So, its using the drivers supplied.

Right now, MiNT has just started fallign over now too?

It must be some update or other because it works perfect for a while and then it goes nuts on me?

I just cannot get round exactly what or how?
 
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