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I upgraded my ASUS AMD desktop from Ubuntu 12.10 to 16.04. Although I am able to sign in the cursor and the screen will freeze while switching back/forth between applications, then after a few seconds the screen will break as seen in the image:

enter image description here

The PC had 4GB RAM and 8GB swap. What causes the freeze - amongst other, opening Thunderbird, then firefox, then chrome in random sequences. Sometimes the freeze occurs after opening system administration/preference utilities.

It happens with both the default Ubuntu desktop as well as Gnome Metacity and unity. I have tried zapping the ~/.config folder of all preferences and letting it rebuild but the problem comes back.

I read some posts talking about various problems with Nvidia graphics cards or drivers, but other than figuring out that the PC has a Nvidia card, I don't know enough about cards or drivers to sort out whether this is the problem.

VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation C61 [GeForce 6150SE nForce 430] (rev a2) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

If it is the VGA will a non-Nvidia card solve the problem? If yes, and it needs drivers, how do you do that in Linux?

ThunderBird
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Bob M
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1 Answers1

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I have an older AMD desktop. It seems that the (default) nouveau driver that is installed by Ubuntu does not work that well with an (old) AMD processor. Whether this problem is limited to my computer and this question or applies generically to other AMD computers, I do not know.

To fix this problem select one of the Nvidia (tested) drivers. This can be done by selecting: Applications --> System Tools --> Preferences --> Additional Drivers.

Steve R.
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