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**DrKosy** · Nov 24, 2008, 03:12 PM

Upgrade from 6.06?

Since no one answered my request, I have another question, which is hopefully more easy to solve. Is there any possibility to update from 6.06 to 8.10 without a new installation of the system?
My update manager didn't show up with such a possibility and a friend told me, it could be possible but wouldn't be easy since KDE have to been upgrated as well. But maybe someone has an hint for me.

**barbolani** · Nov 25, 2008, 06:26 AM

Re: screen flickers while installing Kubuntu 8.10

DrKosy, I have a Ubuntu 6.06 (note, not KUbuntu) machine still running that is offering me to upgrade to 8.04. So to upgrade to 8.10 you'll first have to go to 8.04 and then if all is well the update manager will suggest you to upgrade to 8.10

About your video problems, I'd check what video card you have. If it is an older nVidia card, your best bet perhaps is to wait for 8.10.1 or something similar where the video drivers have been recompiled with the 8.10 version of the kernel (already in beta)

However, don't assume that the live CD is showing you what you are going to get when you install the system. In my case (I've an old nVidia 5200 card) the live CD is not even able to guess the Desktop screen size correct, and when installed the system does not have 3D acceleration. At least in my case, by installing the 173 driver I can get 3D on par with 8.04 on speed and much more stable than 8.04 on desktop effects, albeit with visible garbage on windows the first time they are painted.

So if you've experience with Linux and are willing to hand tweak, probably the 8.10 upgrade is worth the pain. If not, stay in 8.04 until it gets better.

**DrKosy** · Nov 26, 2008, 12:00 PM

Re: screen flickers while installing Kubuntu 8.10

Thank you for your hints, barbolani

My graphics card is ATI-based as all Radeon-Chips are, so there shouldn't be a problem with the driver. But that wouldn't matter if I would see an upgrade option at the update-manager. Perhaps I should have a closer look...
Nevertheless I guess there would be a problem upgrading from 8.04 to 8.10 cause I have to upgrade KDE to a newer version and that while KDE is running. So if there is someone around who did this, please tell me if and how it works

**DrKosy** · Dec 01, 2008, 12:26 PM

Re: screen flickers while installing Kubuntu 8.10

I now upgraded my system via the "do-release-upgrade" command. After the installation I did a reboot. The kubuntu-loading screen works well, but than the flickering of the screen came back. It is the same as if I tried to install kubuntu 8.10 and it was only possible to log in for command-line based use of the system. As the upgrade programm told me, it would go to 8.04 I tried another "do-release-upgrade" command to go to 8.10 hopefully that would solve my problem. But it just didn't find a new release. So now I'm a little bit confused

and don't know what to do. Perhaps someone can give me some hints how to get KDE back.

**barbolani** · Dec 01, 2008, 04:26 PM

Re: screen flickers while installing Kubuntu 8.10

Which ATI card do you have? According to the release notes.

Code:

The ATI video driver in 8.10 drops support for video cards with r300 based chips (the Radeon 9500 - X600 Series of cards). If you have such a card, please use "Hardware Drivers" at System/Administration to disable it before the upgrade. Please see bug 284408 for more information

To verify which ATI card you have run on the command line

Code:

lspci | grep VGA

The output should tell your chip or graphics card specific model.

If that's your case then my suggestion would be first, have kde up and running with the non-ATI driver. Following the advice on the bug's tread, you should execute the following commands:

Code:

sudo apt-get remove --purge fglrx*
sudo apt-get remove --purge xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-radeon
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-ati

That at least should enable X again, however without 3D acceleration or fancy desktop effects.
Some of the comments there suggest that there is a driver available directly from ATI that supports those card models. Said driver has not yet made its way to Intrepid repositories, so you'll need to install it yourself. Since I don't have an ATI card I believe you should search in the forums for more details.

**kbunt** · Dec 01, 2008, 10:44 PM

Re: screen flickers while installing Kubuntu 8.10

I have an nvidia card and it does the same thing on a LiveCD of 8.10.

I find it only flickers like crazy when you first click on the KDE4 menu. It flickers with primarily black and some other colours mixed in

I am not sure if it's Kubuntu-centric but since this happens in Fedora 9 using the KDE-Live version (also KDE4), I will assume that it's an issue in KDE4.

**barbolani** · Dec 02, 2008, 02:41 AM

Re: screen flickers while installing Kubuntu 8.10

This is not a KUbuntu specific problem, it affects all the (x)Ubuntu 8.10 releases. The problem is that 8.10 ships with a kernel with some changes in its code that break compilation of the layer that talks with the binary nVidia and ATIdrivers.

We should bugger nVidia and ATI first to get the drivers that work out of beta, then Ubuntu maintainers to push those drivers to the official repositories.

The problem is so severe and widely spread that I'm wondering why Ubuntu went ahead instead of waiting for the drivers. However, server people probably don't care about graphics cards....

**kbunt** · Dec 02, 2008, 03:42 AM

Re: screen flickers while installing Kubuntu 8.10

So, would subsequent upgrades of the Nvidia and ATI drivers fix the problem? In other words, if it's the right update, will upgrading the appropriate video driver fix the issue AFTER the OS install? I guess people could live with that, eh?

Still, I agree with everything you said...

**barbolani** · Dec 02, 2008, 03:44 AM

Re: screen flickers while installing Kubuntu 8.10

Well, I hope so, but not sure. In theory, both nVidia and ATI are releasing Linux drivers as per their commitment to Linux support. That level of commitment could change, of course.

**kbunt** · Dec 02, 2008, 03:57 AM

Re: screen flickers while installing Kubuntu 8.10

Agreed. I have read the theory that, for e.g., ATI's commitment to Linux is not really 100% if you get my drift (even though they are supposed to be open source and opening up their drivers). Nvidia, as we all know, are not open source and use the closed proprietary drivers (although, the various linux distros use their own versions that recommend users install that one over the proprietary one from the related sites). Or something like that.

I have actually been pulling for Linux to become more popular and influential despite my frustrations with it at times!

I do realize it's an unfair struggle against Windows, for e.g., since companies including Nvidia and ATI are always ensuring their drivers work in Windows before they are functioning properly in Linux. That's gotta be a constant battle that is overly frustrating not just for the basic user.

**dibl** · Dec 02, 2008, 05:40 AM

Re: screen flickers while installing Kubuntu 8.10

Have you tried the Beta 180.06 Nvidia driver? It works great on my 9600GT.

The 8.10 release notes tell about problems with older Nvidia cards and drivers:

nVidia "legacy" video support

The 71 and 96 series of proprietary nVidia drivers, as provided by the nvidia-glx-legacy and nvidia-glx packages in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, are not compatible with the X.Org included in Ubuntu 8.10. Users with the nVidia TNT, TNT2, TNT Ultra, GeForce, GeForce2, GeForce3, and GeForce4 chipsets are affected and will be transitioned on upgrade to the free nv driver instead. This driver does not support 3D acceleration.

Users of other nVidia chipsets that are supported by the 173 or 177 driver series will be transitioned to the nvidia-glx-173 or nvidia-glx-177 package instead. However, unlike drivers 96 and 71, drivers 173 and 177 are only compatible with CPUs that support SSE (e.g. Intel Pentium III, AMD Athlon XP or higher). Systems with older CPUs will also be transitioned to the nv driver on upgrade.

**DrKosy** · Dec 02, 2008, 01:11 PM

Re: screen flickers while installing Kubuntu 8.10

@ barbolani: Thanks again for the help

There are two things I found out: First my version is 8.04 so I ask myself how I could change to 8.10

The second one is: My graphics card is an Radeon 9250 and therfore it uses the r280 chip which shouldn't make problems due to the release notes.
Nevertheless I tried to uninstall the radeon drivers and installed the x11 standard drivers, but that dosen't solved the problem. The screen still flickers and I can only log into an command-line based shell. As next step I tried to install the proprietray linux drivers from ATI but inside the instructions for installation the wrote down a list of files that have to be installed to use the driver. I tried to use apt-get install in order to get them but I was always told that there are no such files availible.

At the moment it seems for me that the only way to get Kubuntu running again is to reinstall 6.06 and wait till those problems are fixed

edit: I now tried to install the propritary ATI driver regardless, but after unpacking it says: "no X-server found" so I wonder what that message should tell me

If I try to start the x-server with the "startx" command it tells me that there was no device found for the fglrx modul and I don't know what that should tell me as well

edit2: With the command "sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-org" I managed to fix my problems with the Xserver startup. After it booted I managed to install all updates although the screen was flickering. After the updates were installed I rebooted and now KDE workes fine. So now I am a nearly happy guy

Now I just have to find out how to upgrade to 8.10

**jonsem.phooey** · Jan 04, 2009, 09:14 AM

Re: screen flickers while installing Kubuntu 8.10

Originally posted by dibl

Have you tried the Beta 180.06 Nvidia driver? It works great on my 9600GT.

The 8.10 release notes tell about problems with older Nvidia cards and drivers:

nVidia "legacy" video support

The 71 and 96 series of proprietary nVidia drivers, as provided by the nvidia-glx-legacy and nvidia-glx packages in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, are not compatible with the X.Org included in Ubuntu 8.10. Users with the nVidia TNT, TNT2, TNT Ultra, GeForce, GeForce2, GeForce3, and GeForce4 chipsets are affected and will be transitioned on upgrade to the free nv driver instead. This driver does not support 3D acceleration.

Users of other nVidia chipsets that are supported by the 173 or 177 driver series will be transitioned to the nvidia-glx-173 or nvidia-glx-177 package instead. However, unlike drivers 96 and 71, drivers 173 and 177 are only compatible with CPUs that support SSE (e.g. Intel Pentium III, AMD Athlon XP or higher). Systems with older CPUs will also be transitioned to the nv driver on upgrade.

Is there any reason users of Kubuntu 8.10 could not just get the source from nvidia and compile it? Or would it be better to wait?

**barbolani** · Jan 07, 2009, 06:03 PM

Re: [somehow solved] screen flickers while installing Kubuntu 8.10

jonsem, the very reason for those drivers to be called "proprietary" is that there is no complete source code for them. So no, we cannot just recompile the drivers themselves. I read somewhere that it was not a problem with the proprietary parts themselves but with the layer that talked to the binary proprietary blobs. So yes, in theory if you have the sources you could fix that part and recompile. I'd advise against that unless you're very skilled and don't mind the next update to break your installation, etc.

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[somehow solved] screen flickers while installing Kubuntu 8.10

[somehow solved] screen flickers while installing Kubuntu 8.10

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