glitchy / garbled text & error filled Ubuntu install

JasonMehmel · 2016-03-04 22:19:56

Hey all,

I was planning on replacing Linux Mint with Ubuntu on our media-machine, mainly because BL isn't something my wife wants to deal with when she's using that machine.

Had a weird error with the install, and it was only on the media machine. Trying the live session from the USB on my Lenovo had no problems.

Much of the text has missing letters or strange renderings of fonts. When I try to operate in the live session from the USB, the logins are not recognized, and when it finally does get through after multiple attempts, there are further errors (that I can't read due to the text problem).

I'm thinking this is a problem with the graphics? Below are links to screenshots from other people's reports on this; I'm seeing the same stuff.

One of those links has a solution, but I'm nervous about fully installing a possibly glitchy Ubuntu through a menu I can't read, only to be unable to fix the problem after installation. I'd be interested if there's any advice from the clever BL folks.

This is on a machine with the following specs:

Machine:   Mobo: ASRock model: H81 Pro BTC Bios: American Megatrends version: P1.30 date: 12/17/2013CPU:       Quad core Intel Core i5-4460 CPU (-MCP-) cache: 6144 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 25590.6 
           Clock Speeds: 1: 2787.625 MHz 2: 1621.875 MHz 3: 2325.250 MHz 4: 2695.375 MHz
Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA GM107 [GeForce GTX 750 Ti] bus-ID: 01:00.0 
           X.Org: 1.15.1 drivers: nvidia (unloaded: fbdev,vesa,nouveau) Resolution: 1920x1080@60.0hz 
           GLX Renderer: GeForce GTX 750 Ti/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 4.4.0 NVIDIA 340.96 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio:     Card-1: Intel 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
           Card-2: NVIDIA Device 0fbc driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 01:00.1
           Card-3: Logitech driver: USB Audio usb-ID: 046d:082c
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture ver: k4.2.0-25-generic

Drives:    HDD Total Size: 1120.2GB (51.3% used) 1: id: /dev/sda model: KINGSTON_SV300S3 size: 120.0GB 
           2: id: /dev/sdb model: WDC_WD10EZEX size: 1000.2GB 
Partition: ID: / size: 28G used: 24G (90%) fs: ext4 ID: swap-1 size: 8.52GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap 
RAID:      No RAID devices detected - /proc/mdstat and md_mod kernel raid module present
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 40.0C mobo: N/A 
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A 
Info:      Processes: 217 Uptime: 46 min Memory: 2804.1/7923.8MB Runlevel: 2 Gcc sys: 4.8.4 Client: Shell inxi: 1.8.4

EXAMPLES:

https://imgur.com/MdlBGUU

https://askubuntu.com/questions/584922/ … ng-letters

Last edited by JasonMehmel (2016-03-04 22:20:39)

KrunchTime · 2016-03-05 02:23:07

Although all questions are welcome here, your question might be better answered in the Ubuntu forums.

JasonMehmel · 2016-03-06 06:34:00

You know, I've tried that, and there hasn't been much response. I figured I'd ask here because the community is overall better, more cohesive and more knowledgeable on a user-by-user basis!

vasa1 · 2016-03-06 06:51:16

JasonMehmel wrote:

You know, I've tried that, and there hasn't been much response. ...

Care to share a link to your thread there?

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-03-06 10:05:09

Looks a bit like https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour … ug/1311488 but that's with nvidia-graphics-drivers-304, you have 340.96

I would advise switching to nouveau, the performance is pretty good these days and it's more reliable.

PackRat · 2016-03-06 16:32:08

mainly because BL isn't something my wife wants to deal with when she's using that machine.

She say why? If it's just because she likes Gnome, your easiest solution may be to install BL then install Gnome and make it the default for her username.

pvsage · 2016-03-06 18:15:21

^ This, or go with vanilla Debian with the Gnome desktop. A quick web search suggests this garbled text thing is a frequent regression in Ubuntu, so why not go upstream (to Debian) to avoid it?

JasonMehmel · 2016-03-09 05:34:48

vasa1 wrote:

JasonMehmel wrote:
You know, I've tried that, and there hasn't been much response. ...
Care to share a link to your thread there?

Here you go!

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2315854

https://askubuntu.com/questions/741721/ … 202_741721

JasonMehmel · 2016-03-09 05:41:28

pvsage wrote:

^ This, or go with vanilla Debian with the Gnome desktop. A quick web search suggests this garbled text thing is a frequent regression in Ubuntu, so why not go upstream (to Debian) to avoid it?

I suppose (and this is arguable) my thought was that Ubuntu was better 'out of the box' as a modern OS than vanilla Debian, in terms of installed drivers and such. In a way, I'm looking for the most painless Linux experience for her, not because she's computer illiterate, but because she's just not interested in Linux or in doing some more of the tweaks and configurations that many of us automatically do just to bring an OS up to our workflow or preferences.

Linux Mint mostly did this, but I'd had enough troubles with it that the distro-hopping itch started to grow...

That said, I'll take a look at Vanilla Debian, and maybe some of the other flavours too...

JasonMehmel · 2016-03-09 05:47:34

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

Looks a bit like https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour … ug/1311488 but that's with nvidia-graphics-drivers-304, you have 340.96
I would advise switching to nouveau, the performance is pretty good these days and it's more reliable.

Sorry, does nouveau mean a version of Ubuntu?

Eraph · 2016-03-09 06:03:30

There are "unofficial" Debian images with bundled non-free firmware which I use due to the slightly dodgy wifi hardware in my laptops, worth trying in your situation:

http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unoff … -firmware/

pvsage · 2016-03-09 06:06:45

^^ Nouveau is the open source Nvidia drivers.

Debian is a lot more complete out-of-the-box than it used to be, and there are images available that include most of the common closed source drivers. (They include the open source video drivers instead of the proprietary ones from Nvidia and AMD, but these too have improved a lot over the last few releases.) Frankly every Debian release since Squeeze has been great ootb, even if the packages are a little more stable than the ones in the Ubuntu releases of the same date.

Besides, Jessie is Best Toy.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Eraph.

EDIT2: Actually, I'd been meaning to challenge myself to spend a full week with Gnome without configuring anything other than the bare minimum (wifi, maybe audio keybinds to compensate for old school keyboard not having multimedia keys), so this thread gives me a good excuse. One thing that I notice right off the bat is it recognized and properly configured my dual head setup without any intervention on my part.

Last edited by pvsage (2016-03-09 06:45:31)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-03-09 07:55:23

@OP: FWIW, I think you should try Debian jessie GNOME -- it's the best desktop Debian offer and I think the standard nouveau drivers will be good enough.

For CODECs, see https://wiki.debian.org/MultimediaCodecs

Get ffmpeg from the jessie-bacports repository, see https://wiki.debian.org/Backports for more.

In terms of the user experience the distribution used is relatively unimportant, it is the desktop environment that makes the difference and GNOME is the very best for computer-averse users, even if you include the paid-for alternatives.

Debian GNOME is probably the best available version of that desktop, especially is respect of stability and reliability.

The different distributions make much more of a difference to the system administrator, ie, you

The best thing about Debian stable is that once it's all set up, all that is ever required is a weekly `apt-get update && apt-get upgrade` and you can forget about it completely otherwise.

Guess which distribution Mrs. Head_on_a_Stick uses?

pvsage · 2016-03-09 08:14:25

^ How many guesses do we get? Just one? (By the way, the ffmpeg at deb-multimedia tends to be a couple versions newer than the one in the official backports repo. Doesn't necessarily mean it's a couple versions better though; it's just some utilities like youtube-dl will gripe if you don't have the shiniest & newest version.)

I just switched my Gnome installation from X11 to Wayland. I was having some tearing issues on my VGA monitor (the one with the more true-to-life phosphors); with Wayland, I have no tearing.

@OP: Debian Gnome on Wayland.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-03-09 08:19:18

pvsage wrote:

deb-multimedia

This is not an official Debian repository, use at you own risk

pvsage · 2016-03-09 08:29:45

^ Just thought I'd mention it because of youtube-dl complaining about the age of the version of ffmpeg in jessie-backports. Most stuff an average law-abiding user will need is handled by stable and stable-backports though.

Last edited by pvsage (2016-03-09 08:31:08)

#1 2016-03-04 22:19:56

glitchy / garbled text & error filled Ubuntu install

#2 2016-03-05 02:23:07

Re: glitchy / garbled text & error filled Ubuntu install

#3 2016-03-06 06:34:00

Re: glitchy / garbled text & error filled Ubuntu install

#4 2016-03-06 06:51:16

Re: glitchy / garbled text & error filled Ubuntu install

#5 2016-03-06 10:05:09

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#6 2016-03-06 16:32:08

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#7 2016-03-06 18:15:21

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#8 2016-03-09 05:34:48

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#9 2016-03-09 05:41:28

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#10 2016-03-09 05:47:34

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#11 2016-03-09 06:03:30

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#12 2016-03-09 06:06:45

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#13 2016-03-09 07:55:23

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#14 2016-03-09 08:14:25

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#15 2016-03-09 08:19:18

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#16 2016-03-09 08:29:45

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