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I am having difficulty with getting linux mint to cooperate with my desktop.


  • Mobo: Maximux IV Extreme-z
  • CPU: i7 2600k
  • GPU: 2x R9 290x
  • Storage:
    • (240GB) 2x OCZ Vertex 3 on RAID0 (Currently using fakeRAID, dmraid)
    • 3TB HDD
  • Sound: X-Fi Titanium HD

Initially I had problems getting Mint to work on the raid, these are the steps I took to solve it

parted /dev/dm-0 (the RAID0 device)
mklabel gpt

then using gparted I made 4 partitions on the RAID0:

  • (2MB) unformatted tagged with grub_bios
  • (250MB) FAT32 tagged with boot
  • (5120MB) linux swap
  • (~240000MB) ext4

And one on the HDD: ext4 ~2.73TB

so now the OS boots, though its into gnome, not the default cinnamon. I can either use this mode, or with Super Grub2 disk, start with the boot option 'i915.modeset=0'. this boots it into software rendering mode. Which brings me to my first question:

Question 1: On my laptop, also using Mint 16, the integrated Intel HD 3000 graphics is detected and used, no assembly required. On my desktop, the integrated Intel HD 2000 graphics is not. Why? And what do I have to do to get it working? this last part is really optional, as I can get the 290x drivers working by doing this:

download 13.12 Catalyst Driver for linux:

following this (post #32 & #33)

then, on reboot, xorg crashes. so i put this in the console

aticonfig --initial

Now the OS is running with hardware acceleration. Great. Except, only during the first login, after each boot, I can generally only use one window at a time, often having to Alt-F4 a window to close it. If I log out, and then back in, the interface is useable, as it should be, but slow. Windows experience screen tearing when moving around, and the whole experience just feels slow.

Question 2: Why is the interface non-multitasking upon first log on after boot, but useable after re-logging in? And why does it feel so slow? How do I fix it?

Question 3: When comparing specs between my laptop and desktop, I would be expecting faster performance overall, including boot time, on my desktop than what I am getting, and generally the experience is far smoother on my laptop than on my desktop. Why?

Question 4: I remember reading somewhere that using a fakeRAID was ill advised in linux, as performance can suffer, would I be better off using mdadm software RAID?

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and for any answers you can provide. Any help would be much appreciated. I have been working on the first two problems (RAID0 and Radeon driver) for about 3 days each.

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What cables did you use to attach displays, and to which cards? –  fooot Apr 8 at 20:06
HDMI to the first card I dont think the display medium should matter so much, but I could be wrong. –  TacticalQuit Apr 9 at 4:52

1 Answer 1

1: Have you tried hooking up the integrated graphics? You mentioned in your comment that you only have one connection to one of the Radeon cards. If you do hook it up and want both integrated and PCIe graphics, it sounds like you have to enable "surround view" in BIOS.

2: On your first login, when the interface is slow, look in /var/log/Xorg.0.log to see if there are any clues. You can compare that to the log after you log in again and it works better. As far as being slow, sounds like a driver issue, can't help much there. I did find some not-so-encouraging info here, suggesting that the drivers just aren't very good under Linux for that card (applicable for 290x as well).

3: SSD boot should definitely be fast, but that is not the only factor. Hardware detection and things like networking can make a big difference for booting. Check your /var/log/syslog and see if you can spot any reasons for delays.

4: According to Ubuntu's documentation, there is no clear performance benefit of fakeRAID vs software RAID. It does mention that fakeRAID has the benefits of also working with Windows and not requiring the OS to boot for repairing an array. Software RAID, on the other hand, is more robust and better supported in Linux.

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1: How do you mean 'hooking up' the integrated graphics? the only outputs i have are on the back of the cards, and I didnt find anything called surround view in the bios. also another interesting thing to note, on my laptop the Integrate Intel graphics is showing up lspci | grep VGA 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09) and it is being detected on my desktop, but is shows up as Display controller how can i fix this? –  TacticalQuit Apr 9 at 20:04

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