Retropie screen flicker Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (32bit)

[jameswilles]

Hi there,

I'm a new user when it comes to Ubuntu so please bare with me... I recently decided to breathe some life in to a really old desktop PC I had sitting around by installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (32bit) and installing Retropie.

I'm having a screen flicker issue when I open retropie? I don't have the issue when on the Ubuntu desktop screen.
this is my first ever install of Ubuntu so wondering if I have some drivers missing for the graphics card?



My PC spec:

• Dell Dimension 8300
• Intel Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz
• 2GB Ram
• ATR R350 graphics
• VGA output to a Cibox C1905 moniter 1440 x 900 pixels
• Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (32bit)
• Emulationstation V2.7.5RP

Hope I've provided enough information if you need more let me know and I will do my best to get it.

Thanks in advance

[cruzer001]

Download link please.

[jameswilles]

I downloaded it from here:

https://mirror.umd.edu/ubuntu-iso/16.04/

then selected:

ubuntu-16.04.4-desktop-i386.iso

[cruzer001]

No, the download link for Retropie.

I can only find a download for ARM architecture (Raspberry).

[mörgæs]

Considering its age the R350 is a fairly strong card but still I suggest that you try X/Lubuntu or another lighter distro in stead of Ubuntu.

[jameswilles]

@cruzer001 oh ok, I got it here:

https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Debian

i downloaded it by just copying and pasting the code in to terminal

[jameswilles]

@mörgæs ok i'll try that, thanks.

[jameswilles]

Still no luck still getting exactly the same flicker after installing Lubuntu 17.10.01 and reinstalling retropie via the script from https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Debian

any ideas what else this could be?

this is what it looks like:
https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=YZ_lTjNXoQw

something else I have discovered if I press f11 which takes me out of full-screen mode the flicker stops??

[cruzer001]

something else I have discovered if I press f11 which takes me out of full-screen mode the flicker stops??

That suggest your system resources are being used to their limits. Try monitoring your CPU & RAM usage with htop.

sudo apt-get install htop

To run htop:

htop

[jameswilles]

i opened htop, then emulation station, then windowed emulationstation & htop showed

CPU.......18 to 25%
Mem......169M/1.97G