Why will Linux not run with an ATI 3870 Vidoe Card ?

Tuvoc

Tuvoc

Tuvoc

Soldato
Joined
19 Dec 2002
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On one of my machines for the last couple of years, I have been constantly frustrated, and eventually gave up, on installing any modern Linux Distro. In all cases the install would either never begin, just freeze, go blank, or give garbage graphics at the initial welcome screen. The only distro I did succed with was an old Ubuntu 8.04 or something and an old Debian. The old Ubuntu was fine until you upgraded, then it would no longer boot.

So anyway - I have recently removed the 3870 and put a 5450 in there. I thought, why not try Linux again - lo and behold, Live CD of Ubuntu runs perfectly :eek:

The 3870 went into another machine, and.... impossible to install Linux on it, exactly the same problems I had with the other box when it had that graphics card. So - moved the graphics card, the problem moved with it. :eek:

At least now I know the problem, it was always a complete mystery. But surely to god Linux *should* play ball with the 3870 ? Why the problem ? No version of Windows has ever had a problem with it. I may just have to ditch the card, but that would be a crap thing to have to do. Any suggestions ?
 
Hades said:
The card itself might be faulty.
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Why, when it works fine under Windows ?? Linux is the thing that is faulty.

I've googled the last few mins, and it seems it is a common problem with the 3870, e.g.
http://ubuntuforums.org//showthread.php?t=1028284

Same issue I had - Ubuntu 8.10 was fine. Upgrade from that, and your machine won't boot into the GUI. Same with a new install of a leter version.
 
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My comment about it possibly being hardware related was that Windows and Linux drivers are likely to use the hardware is slightly different ways. So while a card may run fine under Windows, it may not do under Linux if the fault itself os only exposed there.

But in this case, it does sound like there is an issue with those particular cards under Linux for some reason.
 
Hairybudda said:
The problem here is your inability to use linux, i've got a linux box with a 3870 that's been running flawlessly for years!
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If I was content to run Ubuntu 8.10 or earlier, all would be fine. But all (or at least very many) modern distributions fail to even run the LiveCD. And when I upgraded the earlier versions it ceased to work. I'm not sure how that is my fault or inability to use Linux. Pop the LiveCD in, it should work. It doesn't. Nothing I've done wrong.
 
Tuvoc said:
If I was content to run Ubuntu 8.10 or earlier, all would be fine. But all (or at least very many) modern distributions fail to even run the LiveCD. And when I upgraded the earlier versions it ceased to work. I'm not sure how that is my fault or inability to use Linux. Pop the LiveCD in, it should work. It doesn't. Nothing I've done wrong.
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It's your fault because you're not willing to do the work to get your hardware working, it's not hard to do and expecting a sub 700MB distribution to boot unassisted to a graphical desktop under every conceivable configuration is unreasonable. Why use an enthusiast operating system if you're not willing to learn it?

Linux is just the kernel, your issue likely lies with a driver or x11 which means your issue is with whatever distribution you're using and not linux (you want support for 4 year old video hardware then use a LTS edition, that's what it's for). My 3870 runs under arch linux with bleeding edge software and it's absolutely flawless, I'd advise you to install it because you will learn a lot more than just expecting livecds to work.
 
To be fair, Ubuntu is marketed as an 'easy' Linux distro that mostly does 'just work' ...I would be inclined to agree with you if he was talking about Gentoo or Arch but he's talking about a modern Ubunto distro ...which is really pegged at people that just want to pop a disk in and it'll work, so I think you are being a bit unfair to him here.

Having said that, as I have found with any version of Linux I have used, often to get everything just so, you will have to do some research, at least with Ubuntu there is a massive amount of info out there.
 
Hairybudda said:
It's your fault because you're not willing to do the work to get your hardware working
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No it's not. It's not unreasonable to expect a modern operating system to have basic support out of the box for a modern graphics card! I take your point that a 700MB live CD can't have built-in drivers for everything - but surely it would be possible to do what Windows does and start the graphical interface using a generic driver until the proper driver is installed?

Personally, I don't mind fiddling about with computers - but I think about practicality as well. I don't mind learning to do things in a different way, but it does bother me when the alternative product doesn't get the basic things right. Freezing up or dumping the user into the terminal because he's using a certain relatively recent graphics card isn't getting the basic things right. That is a learning curve which is too steep for the majority of users to bother persevering with.
 
Mattus said:
It's not unreasonable to expect a modern operating system to have basic support out of the box for a modern graphics card! I take your point that a 700MB live CD can't have built-in drivers for everything - but surely it would be possible to do what Windows does and start the graphical interface using a generic driver until the proper driver is installed?
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Right on the button. If Linux fans - and I count myself in that group - ever expect it to grow on the desktop, basic issues like this have to be sorted out. If the 3870 was a cutting edge, just released piece of hardware, I'd sort of understand it. But it is 3 yrs old, no excuses for any operating system not to support it out of the box. And at least it should boot up in a default sort of VGA mode.

To be fair all of my other machines have run whatever LiveCD I've thrown at them. Just the one with the 3870 videcard has been problematic. And when I moved that card, the problem moved with it to the other machine. All the same symptoms. Of course though all of this, Windows Vista and Windows 7 are absolutely fine with the card.

Anyway, the 3870 now sits in a box as a spare, so at least my problems with it have been solved one way or another. It may find it's way back into one of my machines that is windows only, where it will be very happy.
 
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Mattus said:
No it's not. It's not unreasonable to expect a modern operating system to have basic support out of the box for a modern graphics card! I take your point that a 700MB live CD can't have built-in drivers for everything - but surely it would be possible to do what Windows does and start the graphical interface using a generic driver until the proper driver is installed?
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There is, and yes it's entirely possible and has been possible for years upon years.

Mattus said:
Personally, I don't mind fiddling about with computers - but I think about practicality as well. I don't mind learning to do things in a different way, but it does bother me when the alternative product doesn't get the basic things right. Freezing up or dumping the user into the terminal because he's using a certain relatively recent graphics card isn't getting the basic things right. That is a learning curve which is too steep for the majority of users to bother persevering with.
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I'm not sure why you're bringing this up, people who use linux generally use it for the sheer power the shell gives you, why would you run an operating system so CLI centric if you don't like the shell?

Tuvoc said:
Right on the button. If Linux fans - and I count myself in that group - ever expect it to grow on the desktop, basic issues like this have to be sorted out. If the 3870 was a cutting edge, just released piece of hardware, I'd sort of understand it. But it is 3 yrs old, no excuses for any operating system not to support it out of the box. And at least it should boot up in a default sort of VGA mode.

To be fair all of my other machines have run whatever LiveCD I've thrown at them. Just the one with the 3870 videcard has been problematic. And when I moved that card, the problem moved with it to the other machine. All the same symptoms. Of course though all of this, Windows Vista and Windows 7 are absolutely fine with the card.

Anyway, the 3870 now sits in a box as a spare, so at least my problems with it have been solved one way or another. It may find it's way back into one of my machines that is windows only, where it will be very happy.
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See above, there's framebuffer drivers you can use with xorg as a fallback. Oh, and consquently, I've just tried fedora, mint, crunchbang and ubuntu live discs on my 3870 box and they all work fine!

No excuse for bad hardware support? Blame the people who write the drivers, the people who package your distributions, yourself for lacking the foresight to research but you cannot blame linux.
 
OK, perhaps not linux itself, but
- the card works perfectly under Windows
- the card doesn't work with newer versions of Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint, OpenSuSe etc. Can't recall what else I've tried

So something in those distributions - and it seems to be any kernel version after a certain point - won't allow the livecds to run. An older version of Debian was fine, as was Ubuntu 8.10 and prior. These were all x64 versions I might add. I could/should have just stuck with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS or 8.10
 
It doesn't get as far as being able to start the install process. Under Ubuntu, you get the initial splash screen, then just a blank screen with flashing cursor.
 
..thats what the "alternate" install disks are for. If a gui install breaks you can try to install using the text-mode installer and configure things from there.

If you want somebody to blame then try ATI. Its really not forgiveable that the drivers are THAT cruddy. The Nvidia driver is rock solid and offers the same performance as the windows driver and hardware video decode too.
 
I'm sure I tried the alternate install disks. I'm sure a Linux expert on-site would have been able to find out what was happening and find a solution, but I don't know any.

I recall at one point Linux server would happily install and give me a command prompt, so in that sense Linux was OK. But as soon as a GUI was involved, no-go.

Anyway, the 3870 has been replaced by a 6850 and that runs fine, so problem solved.

You're right ATI should share the blame. But odd that I can pull out my Ubuntu 8.04 CD and it will install and run perfectly, but versions 9.x and later will not. And ditto other newer distros.
 
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lolATI. Seriously, when are they going to get their act together? I've been using Nvidia for 7 years now solely due to the fact that Nvidia drivers are awesome on Linux comparably.

OP: Try the CLI install from the CD, then install ATi drivers from a terminal or CLI (ctrl + alt + f1, login, sudo passwd, etc) and see how you do. As its APT you can do a "apt-cache search ATI" too i believe, that will show all ATI packages in the repo's.
 
I gave up on it in the end, dozens of hours wasted trying all sorts of distros and all sorts of suggestions, life is too short.

And under Windows, I'm eyeing up a couple of new games where the 3870 would not do them justice, so time to upgrade anyway
 
Getting it working is half the fun though :) I remember the days of Ubuntu 5.10 when I first started, getting X and Nvidia to work together took hours and days of frustration, and dual monitors was a long time dream. It was so satisfying getting it working in the end though - although i certainly dont wish we were back there - so annoying!
 
Today in your current distro nvidia cards will probably run better due to superior drivers, though if you manage to get catalyst installed, ati will probably be fine for most use cases.

Given the open source movement surrounding ATI cards, the open source drivers have come a long way, and thus supported ATI cards will probably give you a better experience overall, but there will be some limits on maximum performance.

These will improve further; the problem is it takes a while for the drivers to make it into distros, but when I have no doubt that ATI cards will be much better supported both out of the box, and in the performance metrics.

Takes time though, and is of little use if you want this stuff to be working perfectly now.
 
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