Firebird 802 with Ubuntu?

Hello everyone, long long time lurker, first time poster (maybe?). I came to you with one question, I had a Firebird 802 for two years, and recently been thinking about installing ubuntu on it. I heard that ubuntu doesn't really play nice with Nvidia drivers especially dual graphic cards (not to mention the 802 had a custom one).

I was wondering is anyone could tell me, if there would be any problems with install ubuntu on the 802, whether is a good idea or I should just stick with windows.

p.s. I posted this issue before on the old HP forum, but basically got no solution; my 802 freezes if is in "safe power" mode (most of the time it won't even boot it in). I'm a very very casual gamer, and would hope if "safe power" mode could behave.

Thank you in advance.

Before you look to install anything you should work on that freezing issue. If it was my system the first thing I would do is wipe the drive and reload windows. I am not really sure that you mean by freezing. When it freezes does it artifact? Does it black screen? Does it bsod? or does the desktop just remain there and the entire system freezes?

As far as ubuntu the 802 uses mxm video cards (or they are based off of mxm video cards) I am guessing laptop drivers would work.

If reloading does not solve the freezing issue its time to swap around hardware. Try it in a bare minimal configuration with a single stick of memory. Remove the wireless daughter cards and anything else you can and see if the issue persists.

If it is just freezing at the desktop it sounds to me like a psu or hdd problem. I had a customers laptop a while back that was doing the same thing even though the hdd's smart status indicated it was in good health. Same thing with my fathers old hdd. More then likely its time for a new hdd though. Especially if you have a traditional mechanical hdd. I would stick an ssd in it at this point they have come down in price enough. Plus if you are just a casual gamer you shouldn't need a tremendous amount of storage space. If you have enough memory that you can turn off your paging file and disable hibernation you can get a windows 7 installation down to around 20gb. A 200gb ssd should be adequate.

I am not sure what resources you have at your disposal but I would not try to hook a 3.5"" hdd to your firebirds power supply for troubleshooting. While the sata interface is the sata interface I do not think the firebirds psu would supply the drive with enough amps. You could end up frying the psu brick in which case you would be pretty sol. If you have a dedicated sata power supply that would be the way to go for trouble shooting. Something like this would work fine.

Why not both? i have several machines dual booted. With your current install you have two options. One is to try it out live. Two you can dual boot the machine> Ubuntu has the option to install ubuntu like a program. Uninstall if you don't like it. Another option for a gaming machine is SUPERGAMER it has ati and nividia drivers built in.

East wrote:Before you look to install anything you should work on that freezing issue. If it was my system the first thing I would do is wipe the drive and reload windows. I am not really sure that you mean by freezing. When it freezes does it artifact? Does it black screen? Does it bsod? or does the desktop just remain there and the entire system freezes?

As far as ubuntu the 802 uses mxm video cards (or they are based off of mxm video cards) I am guessing laptop drivers would work.

If reloading does not solve the freezing issue its time to swap around hardware. Try it in a bare minimal configuration with a single stick of memory. Remove the wireless daughter cards and anything else you can and see if the issue persists.

If it is just freezing at the desktop it sounds to me like a psu or hdd problem. I had a customers laptop a while back that was doing the same thing even though the hdd's smart status indicated it was in good health. Same thing with my fathers old hdd. More then likely its time for a new hdd though. Especially if you have a traditional mechanical hdd. I would stick an ssd in it at this point they have come down in price enough. Plus if you are just a casual gamer you shouldn't need a tremendous amount of storage space. If you have enough memory that you can turn off your paging file and disable hibernation you can get a windows 7 installation down to around 20gb. A 200gb ssd should be adequate.

I am not sure what resources you have at your disposal but I would not try to hook a 3.5"" hdd to your firebirds power supply for troubleshooting. While the sata interface is the sata interface I do not think the firebirds psu would supply the drive with enough amps. You could end up frying the psu brick in which case you would be pretty sol. If you have a dedicated sata power supply that would be the way to go for trouble shooting. Something like this would work fine.

It is just freezing the desktop, if I switch to "save power" mode after I'm on desktop, it'll just freeze right away with the switching icon still there. If I manually edit the registry file, it won't boot in to the desktop at all, either still on "welcome" screen or simply black screen. It had been like this since I bought the machine, I had always thought it's just the graphic driver's issue, never actually thought about the HDDs. I still have the original HDD that came with it, I may see to get those changed.

ADOR wrote:Why not both? i have several machines dual booted. With your current install you have two options. One is to try it out live. Two you can dual boot the machine> Ubuntu has the option to install ubuntu like a program. Uninstall if you don't like it. Another option for a gaming machine is SUPERGAMER it has ati and nividia drivers built in.

I will try dual boot, but usually I like to stick to one OS.

Thank you all for the input.

Just wanted to add there are bad nvidia drivers going around. 320.18 was making my system freeze at random, the mouse cursor disappear, an occasional black screen and weird behavior when launching any type of directx application. (The screen would turn black as it should but the taskbar would still be visible for a while) Downgrading back to 314.07 fixed all issues.

While I cant fault nvidia as I remember a certain ati driver fiasco a while back somebody at nvidia should be fired for releasing this driver to the public without properly testing it first.