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+--- Thread: Computery stuff (Ubuntu & hardware issues) (/showthread.php?tid=15055)
Computery stuff (Ubuntu & hardware issues) - classicdrogn - 09-26-2026
Ao, after an update Thursday broke how user permissions work and made it the system standard of almost evrything being snaps wouldn't launch them, I spent the last two and a half days fighting to try to get something more recent than Ubuntu 22 LTS installed and working, using the cell phone camera aas a microscope to be able to read the console outputs and so on -- I don't rmemeber who it was that suggested that, but it was someone on here, and not something I ever would habe thought of on my own, so thank you mysterious person. Six different distros, all of which fail in the same way - the installer USB will work as intended in fallback generic graphycs driver mode, but actually doing the install and having the proper NVidia driver results in a blank black screen even when if I wait long enough I can hear the startup sound of a successful system boot. Even the desperation install of MS Doze on a secondary SSD behaves similarly, black screen as the splash screen startup sound plays. I can only conclude that the problem is, somehow, in hardware, with my best guess being that despite having the same nominal power draw, the GeForce 3060 operating at its full capacity does in fact suck harder on the PSU than the Radeon 580 Super-Duper Extra Groovy With Sparkles And Special Sauce that I replaced with it. This would be quite strange since it did work just fine for a month or two afterward, but maybe adding a second pair of RAM sticks pushed it over the tipping point? Honestly I need the RAM more than the GPU, with the number of browser tabs that have accreted over the course of the past few years.
I really don't have more than that as a guess, but does it at least sound plausible? I do have a 550w PSU that could be swapped in for the current 500w from when I was trying to collect enough parts to build a second comp entirely, before tightening financials put that idea to rest for the forseeable future, but clearing things enough to do that level of work wwould be a majpr PIYA at this point, even setting aside the problem of not being able to see small things like srews and jumper headers etc.
Noteably, the system status beeps from the piezo disk thingy haveen't ever worked since swapping in the 3060 either.
A new patch update in the small hours of the morning fixed the issue that sent me off on this whole snipe hunt to begin with so the same workaround Iv've been using for the past three years of booting from an install USB and having the snap folder backed up for the half dozen extra programs I use to keep the settings and caches etc. after reinstalling them every time is back to being viable, but it's really damned annoying and I'd dearly love to get rid of that little extra bit of friction and stress in my life if I could.
I'd like to grab a System76 prebuilt if I could, TBH, as the entire lowest-end system costs less right now than I rmemeber the GeForce 3090 it ships wioth being when I bought the 3060 and the rest of its specs are an equal upgrade from the Ryzen 3600 system I've got now, but no matter how good the deal is I just don't have the scratch unfortunately. A five year old machine is apparently considered obsolescent to begin with these days anyway, and IIRC the Ryzen 3x00 series was actually from 2017. not 2019 when I built it.
I did discover that KDE Plasma, at least as included in the Ubuntu Studio distro, has an absolutely awesome screen zoom feature, but I hated alomst everythhing else about it compared to XFCE or CInnamon desktop environments, so that oine's a bust unless I can get something that will actually work when properly installed so I can make the kind of extensive UI customizations I just don't have the patience for when nothing is going to stick afte the next reboot. I do really need to fix the main issue relatively soon though, even the LTS releases are only kept up for five years, so in another six months or so things are liable to start breaking as keeeping backward compatibility with the 2022 distro is no longer a concern for software updates, and when I'm reinstalling on every rebooot I can't just keep the old versions forever either.