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I have a very old PCI card with Nvidia GeForce 4 MX420 chip(dated back in 2002), using it on a Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3 mainboard(AMD 970A chipset).

I tried to install Ubuntu Linux 20.04 on it, but facing a problem using that video card.

If I boot the Ubuntu installer by its default behavior, on some GUI installer phase, the screen is scrambled, shown below:

Scrambled video output

Later, I find that if I execute the "Install Ubuntu (safe graphics)" menu item, the GUI installer gives normal video output, then I can finish the install phase normally.

"Install Ubuntu (safe graphics)" menu item

So, I think "safe graphics" means using basic VGA driver on my video card. That's OK, totally acceptable.

However, once the formal(installed) Linux boots up, the screen scrambles again, and I think it the installer did NOT relay "safe graphics" trait to the formal Ubuntu instance.

Then, how can I fix that formal Ubuntu instance by telling it to use basic VGA driver all the time?

Thanks in advance.

Jimm Chen
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  • Do you have integrated graphics on CPU? I found my Intel chip video from 2014 was faster than an older nVidia card. https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/low_end_gpus.html – oldfred Oct 20 '23 at 14:15
  • No integrated graphics on my FX8120 CPU, and the GA-970A-DS3 mainboard does not have any video output ports(DVI, HDMI etc). – Jimm Chen Oct 20 '23 at 15:34

1 Answers1

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Edit /etc/default/grub to add nomodeset to this line, for example:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset"

Then run sudo update-grub and reboot.

Organic Marble
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  • Yes, that solved the problem. But the tricky part is, I have to temporarily use a modern video card so that I can gain access to the Linux console to type in those grub commands. The default Ubuntu does not apt install openssh-server, so I have to resort to the locale console. Maybe an alternative way? – Jimm Chen Oct 21 '23 at 04:14
  • Here is how to modify grub from a live usb https://askubuntu.com/a/891812/243321 Be sure to use the "try ubuntu safe graphics" choice from the live usb menu! – Organic Marble Oct 21 '23 at 14:15