I try Stellarium : GPU problem (graphic card ? windows tweaks ?)

[Suzy]

Hi everyone !

I didn’t know if I was supposed to post in the Raspberry thread or here… Till I make the difference, I leave it to the admins …

Well… I tried to install Stellarium, I’m fascinated by the sky and it seems to be an awesome software. But I got an error : I met a problem with the GPU during the installation… Ok, I don’t know much, but I think it has something to do with my graphic card or my display, isn’t it ?
My graphic card is an ATI Raedeon X1950, so it’s fully supported.
For the windows (the tweaks) I chose Marco no compositor… I had Compton but I got lines in my screen
What are the best settings to make everything fit ? (and to get Stellarium if possible).
Thank you very much

[sgage]

I’ve been using Stellarium for years. Stellarium moved to a newer version of QT at some point (between 0.12 and 0.13), and will no longer work with older GPU’s. I downloaded the source for an older version from their website and compiled it - the instructions are quite understandable, and the dependencies are all listed for Ubuntu. I am now happily running Stellarium 0.12.6 on my ancient hardware (Intel graphics).

[Suzy]

Thanks for the info sgage !
I’m too new to know how to compile… one day I’ll be able to do, I think it will be an open door to install older versions like this. Till then, I understand that I need to give up on this beautiful software…
I’ll make some researches about “GPU”, cause I don’t know much what is it really

[sgage]

GPU is “Graphics Processing Unit” - sort of a CPU optimized for doing graphics. If you install a graphics card, it has a GPU on it. Sometimes a GPU comes already attached to the mother board. New Intel CPU’s have a GPU built in, so-called ‘integrated graphics’.

The big names in GPU’s are Nvidia, AMD, and Intel.

Do look into compiling - it does open up possibilities. When you get source code, there are typically fairly specific instructions on the steps to take. The main thing is to be sure all the ‘depenencies’ are installed - these are the development packages that the compiler needs to put it all together.

Most importantly, have fun learning and growing in your skills!

[Suzy]

Thank you very much !

Yes I have fun learning ! at the moment I’m a very beginner… I only had a look on the “tweaks” to start… I have random horizontal lines on my screen here and there, so I try different settings with Marco or Compiz… as my graphic card is a ATI Raedon 1950, it’s supposed to be fully supported without adding any drivers to make it work… so… at the moment, I’m there…

[DaveB]

Hi,

Rather than compiling, there is also a handy ppa (easily install latest 0.12.8 version (released 2 days ago) designed for older graphics cards)

How-to:

Open Terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T), copy & paste the following
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alexwolf/stellarium-12-releases
sudo apt update

Hmm, seems above ppa has been updated, and now incorrectly points to Stellarium 0.14.3 (instead of 0.12.8) for Ubuntu 16.04 based versions. If you have no idea what any of that means, don’t worry!

---

As an alternative, if Stellarium 0.15.1 is still installed there is a way to run it letting the CPU handle most of the graphics processing, this allows the latest version to run on computers with older/problematic graphics cards. Only caveat, Stellarium will run slower, not really noticeable on fast computers, but may be unusable on an older system.

Suggest try and see.

How-to:

• Open Terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T), copy & paste the following

LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 stellarium

Lots of text will wizz by then Stellarium will launch

[Suzy]

Awesome, thank you very much for your help
I try first to set my Ubuntu on my computer, it goes very wrong at the moment (another topic is going on about it
here :

https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/i-love-um-thats-awesome-but-so-many-bugs-here/11613

[DaveB]

Follow up,

Contacted Stellarium 0.12.8 ppa maintainer about linking to version 0.14.3 on Ubuntu 16.04 based systems (so far no reply). On the plus side, found 0.12.8 direct download links for Ubuntu 16.04 based systems on the ppa web-page.

If helpful for your older graphics card, here’s the version 0.12.8 deb file download link
http://ppa.launchpad.net/alexwolf/stellarium-12-releases/ubuntu/pool/main/s/stellarium

While the link may initially look confusing, you only need two files

Download this file first (green text below are direct download links)
stellarium-data_0.12.8-1ubuntu1~ppa2~ubuntu16.04.1_all.deb

Then, if using a 64bit Ubuntu based distribution, you will need this file
stellarium_0.12.8-1ubuntu1~ppa2~ubuntu16.04.1_amd64.deb

If using a 32bit version of Ubuntu based distribution, download this one instead
stellarium_0.12.8-1ubuntu1~ppa2~ubuntu16.04.1_i386.deb