Linux Format forums

littlebrothertimmy

...with my new laptop.

Hi all,

First of all let me give you a warning: I'm a complete newbie when it comes to Linux. Don't know any programming either, so please use "laymen's terms" so I can understand.

I have recently bought a Packard Bell TS11 SB-041 laptop. Some (usefull) specifications:

Processor AMD A4-3300M 1.9
Internal Memory 6 GB DDR3
Harddisk Memory 500 GB
Graphic card AMD Radeon HD 6480G, 512 MB memory
Screen 16:9, 15.6"

Here's the problem: I've tried installing Xubuntu 11.10. Which went well. However: after booting from the Grub (after some "flashes") all I got was a black screen. I tried to run some other distributions from a DVD. Most of them gave the same problem. I read/heard that the problem is caused by either the kernel, a missing driver (the laptop is quite new) or has to do something with the screen resolution.

When I tried downgrading to Ubuntu 10.04 that went fine. No black screen, but it's too old: too low screen resolution and I had to manually edit the internet connection settings (which I was unable to do.)

I am asking for your aid to find a distribution that is compatible with my laptop and that is easily operated and understood by Linux newbies. Do you have a good suggestion?

Thanks in advance

ajgreeny · Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 2:59 pm Post subject:

Try doing the following:-
1. Boot to grub menu
2. With cursor on the line you want to boot to press "E"
3. On the text that appears use cursor keys to go to the line that ends "quiet splash" and add nomodeset so it looks like "quiet splash nomodeset"
4. Press Ctrl+X to boot using that boot option.

If that gets you to a GUI for this specific boot, you should look for a proprietary graphics driver from the additional drivers aplication. I don't use unity so will have to let you find out how you get that from the dash of unity.

Good luck. I hope that helps.
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Ubuntu 10.04 user, and loving it!

Dutch_Master · LXF regular Joined: Tue Mar 27, 2007 2:49 am Posts: 2353

Which other distro's did you try? There's no use recommending one you've already found to fail on your hardware....

littlebrothertimmy · Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 9:45 am Post subject:

I tried doing almost the same thing: on one of the other fora I read you should replace "quiet splash" with "nomodeset". All that did was freeze the start up at the point where the system said "Check battery status". I will try your suggestion as well.

littlebrothertimmy · Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 9:53 am Post subject:

I tried a couple of distros that came with the Linux Format magazine: Linux Mint 12 (black screen, but you could hear it start up), Puppy Linux 5.3.1 (seemed to do well, but eventually went black as well) and Tiny Core 4.2 (which worked) and if I remember correctly Chackra 2011.12 (which went black).

Most seem to work due to the fact that you can hear some kind of tune. It think it's "just" something about the screen/visibility.

nelz · Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 10:21 am Post subject:

It sounds lime something is turning off the screen's backlight.
_________________
Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who it's friends are.

littlebrothertimmy · Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 3:33 pm Post subject:

If that is the case, I'm wondering if anyone has an idea how to fix this.

nelz · Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 4:59 pm Post subject:

The first thing to do is check whether this is the case, is the screen completely black and dead or is there still a light behind it?
_________________
Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who it's friends are.

larcky · Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 7:19 pm Post subject:

littlebrothertimmy · Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 12:07 pm Post subject:

At first the backlight is still on, but soon after a flash and some coloured lines, the screen goes totally black. Tried to adjust the brightness of the screen (my keyboard has special keys for that), but that didn't work. I'm starting to think more and more that it is a drivers issue: first of all, somewhere I read that the laptop is probably too new for the distibution (although then I don't understand why Ubuntu 10.04 is working and a newer version isn't). That the problem could be fixed by installing the most recent drivers (I think I found the right one).
Second of all, when I was testing the LXF live-cd to find out which distros worked and which didn't, I stumbled upon a distro that gave a choice of drivers(I think it was Chakra). I was only able to work with the non-free drivers. So different drivers gave different results: one worked and the other one just gave the same black screen...

littlebrothertimmy · Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 12:14 pm Post subject:

I tried this, but it gave almost the same result: a quick flash of the Xubuntu logo (first time I saw that), then the "checking text" appeared and got stuck in the "checking battery status" again. Somewhere I did find two fails: automated crash reports [fail], as well as "load fallback graphics devices [fail]". I hope that means something to you guys (and galls Wink

)

nelz · Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 12:20 pm Post subject:

I've come across this problem with Intel chipsets before, in that case the cure was to edit the boot options, as described by ajgreeny and add

littlebrothertimmy · Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 5:44 pm Post subject:

Unfortunately that didn't help. The boot even froze sooner than with just "nomodeset" added. No fail reports came up in the short time that passed.

Maybe it is something totally different (and maybe not even important), but during one of my last tries, I saw something about a WMI interface problem (can't recall the exact problem)...