after Lite install, unstable screen on old Asus x50SL

[LioS1959]

Hello, newbie here as well as to Linux in general. Windows user up until now.
I have a few ancient laptops lying around that I'm thinking of bringing back to life installing a light Linux version. Hence, Linux Lite seems like a good candidate.
I went through the moves of installing ver 7.6 and installed all available updates; it said no driver updates are available.
Yet I get an extremely unstable display and can't seem to solve the problem trying every available graphics resolution (see attached video: in it, 1280*800 is being used).
I looked on about every forum I could find to look for help on this issue, but can't find a thing.
Hoping someone can give me a tip? Maybe another member managed to get a working install on a similar old machine?
Joining a inxi dump below, maybe there's something strange in there?
Thanks in advance,
Lio  



INXI result
-------------
System:
  Host: linuxlite-F5SL01 Kernel: 6.8.0-85-generic arch: x86_64 bits: 64
  Desktop: Xfce v: 4.18.1 Distro: Linux Lite 7.6 LTS
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: ASUSTeK product: F5SL v: 1.0
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: ASUSTeK model: F5SL v: 1.0 serial: <superuser required>
    BIOS: American Megatrends v: 301 date: 06/19/2008
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 38.8 Wh (99.0%) condition: 39.2/47.3 Wh (82.9%)
CPU:
  Info: dual core model: Intel Core2 Duo T5450 bits: 64 type: MCP cache:
    L2: 2 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 998 min/max: 996/1660 cores: 1: 1000 2: 996
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD RV620/M82 [Mobility Radeon HD 3450/3470] driver: radeon
    v: kernel
  Device-2: Chicony 1.3 MPixel UVC Webcam driver: uvcvideo type: USB
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.11 driver: X: loaded: radeon
    unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa dri: r600 gpu: radeon
    resolution: 1280x800~60Hz
  API: EGL v: 1.5 drivers: kms_swrast,r600,swrast
    platforms: gbm,x11,surfaceless,device
  API: OpenGL v: 4.5 compat-v: 3.3 vendor: mesa v: 25.0.7-0ubuntu0.24.04.2
    renderer: AMD RV620 (DRM 2.50.0 / 6.8.0-85-generic LLVM 20.1.2)
Audio:
  Device-1: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Azalia Audio
    driver: snd_hda_intel
  API: ALSA v: k6.8.0-85-generic status: kernel-api
  Server-1: PulseAudio v: 16.1 status: active
Network:
  Device-1: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 191 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
    driver: sis190
  IF: enp0s4 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: 00:22:15:7f:f3:45
  Device-2: Qualcomm Atheros AR242x / AR542x Wireless Network Adapter
    driver: ath5k
  IF: wlp2s0 state: up mac: 00:22:43:01:cd:a4
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 465.76 GiB used: 20.89 GiB (4.5%)
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Western Digital model: WDS500G1R0A-68A4W0
    size: 465.76 GiB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 182.28 GiB used: 20.88 GiB (11.5%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
  ID-2: /boot/efi size: 59 MiB used: 6.1 MiB (10.3%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda2
Swap:
  Alert: No swap data was found.
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 77.0 C mobo: N/A
  Fan Speeds (rpm): N/A
Info:
  Memory: total: 3 GiB available: 2.9 GiB used: 1.27 GiB (43.9%)
  Processes: 218 Uptime: 1h 28m Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.34

[stevef]

Your video isn't viewable (for me). According to the hardware DB, there are 20 or so reports of that model running Linux Lite 3 or 4. Just one report on 5.

Have you tried installing version 6.6 ?

[LioS1959]

I have not; will try that and get back 2 u.   thanks!

[LioS1959]

Hi Steve, I pulled the video because I got all kinds of weird reactions from my friends... appreciate your suggestion but that didn't solve the problem, if anything, the situation got worse; 6.6 boots up, but after the spinning wheel disappears I get a lot of jumble on the screen but with nothing readable. Should I try 5.6 ?   

[stevef]

The suggestion to use 6.6 was largely based on the age of the machine and the fact that we have reports of similar hardware running on obselete versions of Linux Lite.  Linux 5.x is out of support so can't be recommended.

Can you confirm that the display is stable and fully functional when you boot from the live media (iso) to test the distribution ?  If the display is not fully functional and stable when booting from the iso, please let us know.

If it is stable, please boot from the 7.6 iso, open a terminal (by pressing Ctrl, Alt and T together) and run these commands.

Code:

sudo lshw -C display

Code:

lspci | grep -i VGA

Code:

inxi -Gx

If the installed version of 7.6 allows, please boot and repeat the three commands

Post the results back making it clear which results are from the live (iso) boot and which are from the installed boot.

[LioS1959]

@stevef : hi again Steve, no the display is not stable when I boot the lve USB either; in fact, the behaviour is exactly the same when booting the live iso or the installed version.

the output from the 3 commands you suggested (from the installed version) is as follows :
 lionel  ~  1  sudo lshw -C display
[sudo] password for lionel:
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: RV620/M82 [Mobility Radeon HD 3450/3470]
vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
logical name: /dev/fb0
version: 00
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom fb
configuration: depth=32 driver=radeon latency=0 resolution=1280,800
resources: irq:24 memory:d0000000-dfffffff ioport:d800(size=256) memory:fdef0000-fdefffff memory:c0000-dffff
 lionel  ~  lspci | grep -i VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV620/M82 [Mobility Radeon HD 3450/3470]

inxi -Gx
Graphics:
Device-1: AMD RV620/M82 [Mobility Radeon HD 3450/3470] vendor: ASUSTeK
driver: radeon v: kernel arch: TeraScale bus-ID: 01:00.0
Device-2: Chicony 1.3 MPixel UVC Webcam driver: uvcvideo type: USB
bus-ID: 2-5:3
Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.11 driver: X: loaded: radeon
unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa dri: r600 gpu: radeon
resolution: 1280x800~60Hz
API: EGL v: 1.5 drivers: kms_swrast,r600,swrast platforms:
active: gbm,x11,surfaceless,device inactive: wayland
API: OpenGL v: 4.5 compat-v: 3.3 vendor: mesa v: 25.0.7-0ubuntu0.24.04.2
glx-v: 1.4 direct-render: yes renderer: AMD RV620 (DRM 2.50.0 /
6.8.0-85-generic LLVM 20.1.2)
I'll send you the output from the same commands while running the live version in a bit, rebooting takes a while on this baby...

[stevef]

Vista era hardware will be slow when running modern OS - you obviously expect that. Even if the display had worked, it may have been unusable. I have a W7 notebook which can boot LL v7 and 'works'. It is of technical interest to me, but is not practical for everyday use.

Your original post made no mention of the display problem when booting from the iso, so I'd half-assumed it had only become apparent after install. There was no need to provide any results if the iso boot was unstable

Installing a system that doesn't work when you test it is optimistic. I'd suggest moving on from the F5SL

[LioS1959]

@stevef
Yeah that would be the wise thing to do (dumping the F5SL I mean); but I'm a bit of an obstinate guy
I tried a live version of Damn Small Linux and that seems to work; not sure it will be able to run a Tdarr node (which is what I'm trying to set up the F5SL for in the first place; got a bunch of big videos to shrink down to playable size...) but I might as well give it a try, right?
Thanks a lot for your help anyway, maybe I'll be back to LL 7 for a bit of a more recent machine shortly
Bye for now.