RetroProfessional

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EDIT: I give up.
I had enough of Puppy linux and other distros. I cant believe that there is no Ubuntu distro that use less that 512mb of ram. So i woid like so recommendtations please.

Hello by the way, since im new to the forums, anyways,
I am having a problem on my laptop, every distro i try, doesn't matter if its just command line or in a desktop enviroument, the screen is always glitched, has black bars and out of place. This is getting on my nerves and the only solution to this problem is to change the resolution to 1024x768 or 800x600, but the native resolution of my laptop is 1280x800. The laptop in question is a Compaq Presario v3500 with a AMD T-57 1.9Ghzz Dual-Core nVidia GeForce 7150M 2GB ram.


Please view the image below to see what i am talking about. It would help if anyone can tell me a solution to this problem.
This affects Ubuntu and Xubuntu also, not just Puppy Linux.


IMG_20190620_173955.jpg


If anyone can find a solution to my problem that works, thanks a bunch.
 
Last edited:


the native resolution of my laptop is 1280x800
Hi @RetroProfessional, and welcome. That is a bit of an odd resolution... it works out to an 8:5 format (or 16:10)... when 4:3 and 16:9 are the standards we usually see. If you can find a matching resolution in 8:5 format available to you in your monitor settings, that should provide a clear image. Matching 8:5 resolutions would include the following:
1440x900
1680x1050
1920x1200
2560x1600

If none are available, I'd guess trying the 16:9 format would be the next closest thing, such as:
1280x720
1600x900
1920x1080
2560x1440
3200x1800

If nothing works above, then I'd guess you will need to install proprietary drivers for your nVidia card. That may not be so easy with Puppy Linux, but I think you should be able to with Ubuntu/Xubuntu or other more mainstream distro. Good luck!

Cheers
 
Hi @RetroProfessional, and welcome. That is a bit of an odd resolution... it works out to an 8:5 format (or 16:10)... when 4:3 and 16:9 are the standards we usually see. If you can find a matching resolution in 8:5 format available to you in your monitor settings, that should provide a clear image. Matching 8:5 resolutions would include the following:
1440x900
1680x1050
1920x1200
2560x1600

If none are available, I'd guess trying the 16:9 format would be the next closest thing, such as:
1280x720
1600x900
1920x1080
2560x1440
3200x1800

If nothing works above, then I'd guess you will need to install proprietary drivers for your nVidia card. That may not be so easy with Puppy Linux, but I think you should be able to with Ubuntu/Xubuntu or other more mainstream distro. Good luck!

Cheers
Thank you for replying.
anyways,
the laptops native resolution is 1280x800, a 16:10 aspect ratio and for some reason, the LIVECD sets the resolution to 2000x800 but that is not a problem. I am trying to install the nVidia drivers but I can't get nouveau to be disabled, bootloader is grub4dos and kernal version is 4.9.58. So if you know how to disable nouveau kernal, please tell me everything I need to know.

Thanks for helping me by the way.
 
EDIT: I give up.
I had enough of Puppy linux and other distros. I cant believe that there is no Ubuntu distro that use less that 512mb of ram. So i woid like so recommendtations please.
Hello again. I've renamed your thread to be a little more descriptive of your trouble. Yes, you can safely believe that it is very difficult to get a decent operating system to run on 512 MB of RAM. Most modern OS's need 1GB - 2GB as a minimum now, but there is still some hope in 2 ways:

1. Since Puppy Linux did not work well for you, try other low-RAM systems. Here is a list of many alternatives that might work. I'd recommend staying with those that have been recently updated, in 2018 or 2019, for better security. I'd particularly recommend antiX and Slax as starting points, but you may find others that are better suited to you and your Compaq laptop. Besides the Wikipedia list above, there are some other recent articles with suggestions for you: here, here, and here.

2. Upgrade your RAM. A quick search (here) shows your laptop capable of upgrading to 4GB. It would be money well spent to avoid at least some of the frustrations you are having. Crucial is not the cheapest place around, but they are identifying what you need, so you can shop around for a better price elsewhere. I do think that Crucial is a good company, however, and their prices were not outrageous either.

The 16:10 aspect ratio of your monitor may still be an issue, but it will probably be much easier to resolve if you can run a more powerful and modern OS.

Cheers
 
Crucial is not the cheapest place around, but they are identifying what you need, so you can shop around for a better price elsewhere. I do think that Crucial is a good company, however, and their prices were not outrageous either.

I agree with atanere. Use Crucial to identify the type of RAM you need but check out buying elsewhere. In the UK you can get 4Gb of RAM for £6.00 from eBay.
 

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