Graphics issue on older notebook with Radeon RS690

Fabian Mueller

4/30/24, 7:03 PM

I am setting up an older notebook (Toshiba Satellite A210-151) which we want to donate to a girl in Africa.

All seem to work fine so far, but when starting gnome-software I see artifacts. Now I am worried that this issue might also come up in other situations / when using other applications.

Here is a photo how the issue looks like:

Here is a video showing the whole dilemma

The issue is the same on Xubuntu 22.10 and 23.04. The articles I found so far are 10 years old and do not fit to current driver situation and Linux kernel.

$ sudo Ispci -vin | grep VGA
01:05.0 VGA compatable controller (0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD/ATI) R$690M (Radeon Xpress 1200/1250/12701 (1002:791f1 (prog-if 00 (VGA controlle r])

$ glxinfo -B 
name of display: :0.0 display: :0 screen: direct rendering: Yes
Extended renderer info (GLX MESA query renderer):
Vendor: Mesa (0x1002)
Device: ATI R$690 (0x791f)
Version: 23.0.2
Accelerated: yes
Video memory: 128MB
Unified memory: no
Preferred profile: compat (0x2)
Max core profile version: 0.0
Max compat profile version: 2.1
Max GLES1 profile version: 1.1
Max GLES[23] profile version: 2.0
OpenGL vendor string: Mesa
OpenGL renderer string: ATI R$690
OpenGL version string: 2,1 Mesa 23,0,2
OpenGL shading language version string: 1,20
OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 2,0 Mesa 23,0,2
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string, OpenGL ES GLSL ES 1,0, 16

$ sudo lshw -c video
*-display
 description: VGA compatible controller 
 product: R5690M Radeon Xpress 1200/1250/1270] 
 vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] 
 physical id: 5
 bus info: pci@0000: 01:05.0 
 logical name: /dev/fbo 
 version: 00 width: 64 bits
 clock: 33MHz
 capabilities: pm mi vga controller bus master cap list rom fb 
 configuration: depth=32 driver=radeon latency=64 resolution=1280,800
 resources: irq:27 memory: f9000000-f7ffffff memory: f8100000-f810ffff ioport: 9000(size-256) memory: f8000000-f80fffff memory:c0000-dffff

0 + 1

graphics

drivers

amd-graphics

mikewhatever

4/30/24, 8:18 PM

For hardware this old (2007), Ubuntu is not the best choice to say the least. Xubuntu or Lubuntu might work a bit better, but I'd try [AntiX](https://antixlinux.com/). That said, I am not sure how useful it will be with any OS, even in Africa.

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: Graphics issue on older notebook with Radeon RS690

Post an answer

Most people don’t grasp that asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. In Alison’s studies, for example, though people could accurately recall how many questions had been asked in their conversations, they didn’t intuit the link between questions and liking. Across four studies, in which participants were engaged in conversations themselves or read transcripts of others’ conversations, people tended not to realize that question asking would influence—or had influenced—the level of amity between the conversationalists.