Desperate plea for help with graphics problem

[Aere Greenway]

On 01/02/2014 05:24 PM, Jeffrey Needle wrote:
> Hello.  I downloaded Lubuntu 13.10 today and updated the system
> completely.  I'm running on a Dell Dimension 3000 desktop.  I'm
> encountering a problem with graphics that is not unique to Lubuntu, but
> perhaps can be solved here.
>
> I use Evolution as my groupware client.  Version 3.2.3, that ships with
> many distros based on the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, is buggy and annoying.  You
> need to have a distro that runs at least Ubuntu 12.10 in order to have
> the dependencies you need to run later versions of Evolution, which work
> much better.
>
> But later versions of Linux bork my graphics in both Firefox and
> Chromium.  When I try to play a video, say, on YouTube, the video is
> squished and distorted, just maddening!
>
> So, my quandary: I need later versions of Evolution in order to get my
> work done, which require later versions of the Ubuntu software, but
> these later versions seem to really bork my graphics so that I can't see
> anything!
>
> Oddly, VLC works fine.  And I can copy a URL from YouTube, open it in
> VLC, and it works just fine!
>
> I'm so puzzled.  If anyone can help, I'd really be grateful.  Thanks.
>
>
>
Jeffrey:

I have a Dell Dimension DX-1100 machine, which had similar problems, 
arising from the Intel graphics card having been abandoned by Linux.  
The symptoms playing YouTube videos were as you described, and the 
Lubuntu sign-on screen has 'ragged edges' instead of smooth color 
gradients.

My other Dell machines have an AGP card-slot for a NVIDIA graphics card, 
and I solved the problem with them by getting a NVIDIA (GeForce) 
6200-256 graphics card for the AGP card-slot.

My DX-1100 machine had no AGP card-slot, so I thought there was nothing 
I could do for it (my then primary machine).

But I found out that there were NVIDIA graphics cards that worked with 
ordinary (not the new) PCI slots.  So I thought that would solve the 
problem for my DX-1100 machine, as well as a Dell Optiplex GX-260.

To my dismay, I discovered the PCI NVIDIA card didn't work at all in the 
older (slower) GX-260 (or GX-240), but fortunately, it worked fine in 
the Dell DX-1100 (which has a Celeron processor, and a 400-MHz 
memory-bus speed).

So the PCI version of the NVIDIA card rescued my Dell DX-1100.  But the 
other PCI NVIDIA card I bought was not usable in the slower machines, 
and I couldn't return it (wasting about $70).

I later put an AGP NVIDIA card in the GX-260, which fixed the problem, 
allowing it to go into the future with Linux.

If your Dimension-3000 has an AGP card-slot, a NVIDIA card (fitting into 
an AGP slot) should fix it.  If it doesn't have an AGP card-slot, but 
has a 400 MHz memory-bus speed, the PCI-card-slot version of the NVIDIA 
graphics card /_might_/ solve your problem.

The graphics card that saved my Dell DX-1100 was a "NVIDIA GeForce 6200 
512MB DDR2 PCI" card.  Beware that it might not work (as it didn't work 
in my Dell GX-240, or in my GX-260, both of which have a slower 
memory-bus speed).

-- 
Sincerely,
Aere

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