I tried UM 15.10 last week in live mode and it worked fine on my old, old Windows XP machine. Installed it and am only getting an option for 640x480. Uninstalled and tried again with same result.
I ran lspci and my onboard graphics are the SiS 661/741/760 PCI AGP or 662/761Gx.
When booting in live mode it says SiS630smbus not detected but it displays fine. I also triple boot Windows XP, Linux Mint Maya, and Puppy Linux on this machine. All display fine.
I don’t mean to be a bother but really want to use something lightweight that is being actively updated and really like the snappiness of this distro.
Just wanted to mention that in my research, I ran across the option to go into recovery mode and reconfigure the x11-common for “Anybody” but still no love.
I have a couple of old SIS driver packages from way back when but I don’t know if they will work on Ubuntu now, they stopped working (the aforementioned packages) on Ubuntu 10.04 I think it was!.
Update: I tried @wolfman and @wizd3m’s suggestions. No luck yet.
Here’s my dilemma: Why does it display just fine in “live mode” but not when it is installed. I could understand it being an “old hardware or unsupported driver” issue if it was the same in both scenarios, but not how it is currently.
When I go to recovery mode and drop to root I can get it to show correctly but that isn’t keeping my settings when I do a normal bootup.
Any thoughts?
@wolfman, I did put PCLinuxOS on a jump drive and check it out. Not bad but not quite as nice as Ubuntu Mate. Might give it a go if I can’t figure this out.
Could you upgrade to a old Matrox video card? It will run circles around SiS. Last one I purchased from eBay had 4 outputs and 512M of video ram and cost $10 (included shipping). I say Matrox because I have found them to be highly (if not 100%) compatible with linux and dirt cheap. Just one tip; be sure the card is built in USA so you don’t end up with a knock-off. I strangely enough had to purchase that last matrox card from china to get one that was manufactured in the states.
restart your PC and go into “Recovery Mode” then activate “Network” and run “root”, type the following commands and see if that fixes the problem for you (This option requires a working cable network connection):
sudo apt-get --fix-missing install
The above command downloads and installs any missing packages on your system.
sudo apt-get --fix-broken install
The above command downloads and installs any broken dependencies on your system.
Ok, I’m going to mark this one solved. But I don’t know what exactly fixed it, and yes, I’m disappointed by that.
I had an earlier suggestion to try another video card (separate from my on-board graphics). I happened to have several old computers here and one had a Nvidia GeForce4 MX 4000. That messed up my Mint 13 and UM installs (would show correct resolution and then a black screen) so I updated it to the latest kernel. It was during this time I lost my Ubuntu GRUB menu (with the green background).
I also tried @wolfman’s last suggestions which I think I had already done through the Recovery dpkg menu. Today I removed the Nvidia card and went back to my original on-board graphics.
I “think” the solution was that I now have - and perhaps already had - 3 options for Ubuntu Mate in the GRUB menu. The second one actually gave me the option to change and save my screen resolution. The only other thing I can think of is this: Since both Ubuntu Mate and Mint are ubuntu derivatives, I wonder if my Mint 13 install, based on an older kernel, was keeping me from changing the screen resolution in UM. This might explain why it would work in live mode but not when permanently installed.
Some final observations. Hopefully this will be helpful to someone else in the future.
The three lines shown by my Grub menu now are as follows:
a. Ubuntu’ --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux – class gnu --class os ‘gnu->
b. Ubuntu, with Linux 4.2.0-19-generic’ --class ubuntu --class gnu-Linux->
c. Ubuntu, with Linux 4.2.0-19-generic (recovery mode)’ --class ubuntu ->
I’ve noticed the last two times I rebooted UM that it now pops a little message about LDM quitting so I take it that’s a good sign.
I didn’t note before but I also had issues when trying PCLinuxOS with the Nvidia card. I expect that will no longer be an issue now. In the same way, I expect my Puppy Linux install will also be fine.
Lastly, I really do appreciate the comments by those who took the time to respond. I know it can be challenging trying to diagnose computer issues over the net or over the phone so I consider this community to be top notch in it’s desire to help noobs figure out configurations.
I tried but couldn’t figure out how to edit my thread title to include “SOLVED” so if a mod could help, that would be great!
but congrads anyhow.