Unity total failure on Intel 865G

[CyborgAlpha]

Similar situation with integrated graphics Intel 4 Series. Oddly enough, the same thing happened when installing Kubuntu 10.10.
No answer yet, but it will likely be something that an xorg.conf could compensate for?

I had no issue with 10.10, but as practice I now wait 2 months after the release date to update.

[oliveryty]

Have you guys tried unity-2d?

sudo apt-get install unity-2d

[CyborgAlpha]

I have a couple of laptops with that same chipset. They will be using another linux distro on upgrades. If i am not mistaken i think we need to have the intel 900 series or better to use Ubuntu 11.04 or better. Not going to spend the money to buy new laptops will use what ever distro will work with them, no Ubuntu ,then no Ubuntu .

I like kubuntu 10.10 , but if kubuntu 11.04 isn't fixed for Intel 865G - I'll be leaving too (and so will a lot of people from what I've seen).

The beauty of linux/unix is it's ability to bring older machines back to life. Kubuntu 10.10 runs fine on an Intel 865G machine with only 512MB of RAM.

[amiliv]

Well, looks like good old 865G is a bit too old these day for many other things, not just Unity.

I've an old Dell 3000 desktop: 2.4GHz Celeron, 865G chipset, only PCI slots, no AGP (insert an angry look at Dell here). It worked great for many day to day things, but anything needing any kind of remotely fancy graphics was unusable.

So, hit the bullet, and ordered an PCI version of GeForce 9500GT last week. Arrived today, plugged it in, installed nvidia driver (simply using "additional drivers" from system settings). Unity fully works, as well as all that other eye candy like GL based screen savers that was unusable before. All feels fast as well. Normally, I don't play games, but just to test the things a bit more, I installed few, and they all worked fine and smooth (at least on default settings), even on this old system. Boxee application now works nicely as well (was a bit slow on 865G), and even streaming videos is now an option on this old box again.

I guess anything that needs to transfer large amount of data to the card still isn't going to work (due to slow PCI), but many things for which 865G was simply too slow will work.

Summary, if you want Unity, or to simply prolong the lifetime of your old system for a few more years, an graphics card upgrade might be good way to go. If you are lucky to have AGP or PCI-e slot in your system, go for that. If you only have PCI slots (like in my Dell), even PCI based card will make a big difference (as long as your applications don't hit the limits of the old and slow PCI bus).

[HappySmack]

Dell Optiplex GX270
Intel Corporation 82865G Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)

I had to uninstall Unity just to get Classic/no effects to work. I am really irked by the inability to enable effects (Compiz). Brought to my attention in this thread, http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1746497
was the issue of the i915 driver being used in 11.04 as opposed to the i810 driver that was used in 10.10.

My question would be, has anyone tried reverting to the i810 driver? If so, can Compiz be enabled? Unity? 2D or 3D (doubtful)

[danielgm]

Unity 2D should work (it does in my machine, similar specs). It even shows composition (transparent windows, windows shadows), but I'm not sure if it's because I had them already enabled in Metacity (in gconf-editor set /apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager to "true").

[elinap]

Unity-2d works on Intel 865G (on old IBM Think Centre) after doing
sudo apt-get install unity-2d.

Before installing unity-2d, the screen "went crazy", and windows did not draw properly.

Why doesnt it work on this system? It is not that old...

Old applications after upgrade are "hidden" in applications tab, together with all the rest that were installed...

[OldBoy44]

Hi all,

I note that my Intel MOB D865GLC has an AGP 8X/4X graphics interface with the flexibility to upgrade via a high end AGP graphics card supporting universal 1.5V 3.0 up to AGP 8X.

Will such an upgrade fix the problems outlined in the previous posts?

If so, can anyone one suggest a suitable card as I am a complete newbie in this area?

If so, where is the best place to obtain one?

I do not need for gaming.

Cheers,

[jasonofx]

Just chiming in with another "Me too". I have a little Gateway box I got for $50. It has a 2.8 Ghz processor with 2 gb ram. Was hoping to dual-boot Unity and XP on this, it's a work computer. Guess not. Re-installing 10.04 LTS, guess I'll wait to see if this gets fixed to try it again. May not get fixed being an older chipset and all.

[galacticaboy]

I got the same Graphics and I could not do Unity, I had to install Unity 2D and that worked great!