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Troubles installing SteamOs on an old PC.

Tarvaln

Tarvaln

Senior member
I'm trying to install SteamOS on an old Toshiba. It has a ATI 3100 GPU which is causing installation issues. I'm getting a debootstrapper error during the install of the ATI drivers.

I'm new to Linux and need to know if I can change a default.preseed file to fix my issue.

I'm using a custom build of the OS called Stephenson's Rocket which is and older build but is suppose to support all the older cards. Unfortunately only some of the older cards are support. Mine isn't on that list.

There is a disscussion about my issue and a fix listed here. But I'm a little lost about how to apply the fix.

Do I just edit the default.preseed? And if so is there a certain line to put those edits on?

Do I need to rebuild the ISO. If so, how? Also, can I rebuild a newer version of SteamOS with these Debian AMD 13.1 drivers?

Or has someone already done these wonderful things and I just can't find it on the internet.

Thanks.
 
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I'm not familiar with an ATI 3100 GPU. Is it a discrete card, or onboard? The reason I ask is, the onboard on a 760G is a 3000, and the onboard on a 785G is a 3200, I believe. So I'm curious, what chipset is a 3100.
 
It's a onboard card shipped in laptops around 2008. My Toshiba Satellite L355D-S7901 has one. I believe it uses the M780V chipset.

OP did you try installing the open source driver to see if that worked? I read through your links and it looks like there is no easy fix yet but the one silver lining appears to be "SteamOS requires a Radeon 5000 or newer for ATI users. Stephenson's Rocket will use the Open Source driver instead on older cards.".
 
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bbhaag, I'm not sure how to install the open source drivers. I choose the automatic install option from the boot menu. If you can tell me way to do that I would appreciate it.

The creator of the Rocket installer just posted this in the thread I linked above. Maybe it's a lost cause?

directhex
I haven't fixed it, as I don't have a future-proof solution. If I fix all three bugs involved, then a future update to the steamos-base-files package will erase my changes, resulting in black screens for anyone who was using an old Radeon. If I block updates to the file in question, there may be other unforseen issues in the future relating to updates to steamos-base-files. I'd welcome a good suggestion for how to forsee the future.
Click to expand...

*Update* I asked the author to tell me how to fix the bugs and block the driver update. But, I love second opinions so if anyone can think of another way to do this that would be great. I know there are 13.1 AMD drivers for Debian that SteamOS is built on. Maybe I can use those in some way?
 
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I'm sorry Tarvaln but I have no experience with SteamOS so I'm not sure. I use Mint 17 on my laptop and when I installed it it picked up on the fact that support for the 3100 is eol and installed the open source driver by default.

Sorry I can't be more helpful.:|
 
I appreciate your help man. I'm considering just installing Debian and calling it a day. I'd like my laptop to serve as a HTPC, Minecraft server and Steam in-home streaming PC. I think I can accomplish those things with Debian.
 
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