Getting my stuff of Ubuntu

[#1]

Quote

(but at 13 years old it's probably due retirement)

Yeah I'm rapidly coming to that conclusion. After many hours trawling through Ubuntu forums I find many people with the same issue as mine. Albeit nobody seemed to be finding an answer.
The problem lies with compiz and the nvidia 304.128 driver that comes as standard in ubuntu releases. Every post I read appears to have a similar card or variant to mine. Looks like while this computer had been on holiday for about six months Ubuntu has had some hardware snobbery that finally caught up with me. Odd because up until this point I had a perfectly working system running Unity. I confirmed this by going into fallback gnome mode and running in meta, works even with the 304.128 drivers. Soon as I try Unity or gnome compiz I can't get past the greeter screen.
By the way I also blew out the case and gave everything a thorough clean before setting up.
So where does that leave me now. Was thinking will Mint have the same issues? I assume it will also use this driver and compiz? I tried the latest version rafaele which booted into live cd, went through the install process but never ended. I left it running for a few hours but it didn't seem to complete. I think that may have been a corrupted disc though. I burned it with brasero and it failed the check at the end but tried it anyway.
Are there any versions of mint I may get away with or will I just come across the same issue? Last ditch I suppose could be to just run ubuntu in meta for now until I find a gcard. Not sure about a tenner though. Last time I was looking for second hand AGP gcards they were quite expensive. I based that on people knowing if you don't get one it's a full rebuild.
Is there any downside to running in meta, will it limit me in any way?
Also nipped to the dark side and tried a w7 disc I had but that also gets stuck in installation. A quick search shows issues with hardware that need disabled and I couldn't be bothered going much further with it if I'm honest. 

[#2]

You could get away with a Mate version of Mint. No compiz there.
A quick search on ebay for agp video card shows "agp graphics card  1,386 listings" from <£5 upwards

[#3]

Didn't realise they still made AGP cards.
Mint has the advantage of losing all that Unity *******.
Standard Mint is based upon Ubuntu - so it may or may not work.
However, there is the alternative of LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) which is based on Debian packages.
The two types of Mint are visually very similar.

[#4]

Quote

You could get away with a Mate version of Mint. No compiz there. A quick search on ebay for agp video card shows "agp graphics card  1,386 listings" from <£5 upwards

Any version of Mate? I haven't been keeping up with the goings on there. I'm used to four releases then a LTS but Mint appear to have three LTS going on at the same time. As for Gcards, I had a look, looks like I need to swat up on what they all mean. I haven't messed about  with cards since gaming about 15 years ago. I wouldn't even know if they were better or worse than the one I already had.

Quote

Didn't realise they still made AGP cards.

Yeah you know what, was just thinking before. When I bought the 6800gt I was into PC gaming and at the time it was the dogs, from memory I paid over £200 which was a lot of brass when I got it. I remember buying Ghost Recon Advanced warfighter and it wouldn't play because of my gcard .Devastated isn't the word, the card was only a year or so old. Anyway vowed on that day I would never do it again and bought a ps3 based on every game that comes out will play.
Having said that, its still running a system to this day and for more years to come if I ease up on the bells and whistles. In that time its been my gaming rig, family desktop and now resigned to crunching spreadsheets and viewing pdf's drawings at work. Thinking about it, it was a bargain.
Just shows you, buy the best hardware you can buy and run linux and you'll get your money's worth. It always seems to be software that kills of hardware ime anyway.

[#5]

What Mint have done is instead of blindly following Ubunutu, they have taken the LTS version and only add improvements to the Mint ecostructure and any bug fixes, but no new "features" so you can choose any from the 17.x releases. I am on 17.3 and just switched to Cinnamon from Mate this year.

[#6]

OK, I downloaded Rafael last night and put it on a USB stick, both of which passed md5 checksums. I'll try a burn it on a disc tonight hopefully without errors! At least I know I have ubuntu gnome meta to fall back on if all else fails. I notice that 14.04 is only supported to august this year so I could do with putting something on with a bit more legs.
As ubuntu no longer supports meta I feel I'm going to have further problems with this setup on the next lts.

[#7]

Both Mint and Ubuntu support their LTS releases for 5 years - so 14.04 expires in 2019.

[#8]

According to this https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases 14.04 is end of life august 2016 unless that means something different.

[#9]

No idea about Ubunutu but Mint:
Linux Mint 17.2 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2019

[#10]

It seems that Ubuntu LTS 14.04.1 lasts until 2019 (but not 14.04.2 or 14.04.3) 
I don't use Ubuntu, I use LMDE.
BTW A release doesn't stop working just because it's no longer supported. 

[#11]

Is anything meant to happen between the loading files dialogue box and system installing with Mint? Once I get passed the copying files part the box showing mint features goes away and I'm left with the spinning loading part and nothing else. No sign of hard drive activity either. The same thing happened with my other mint installation.
I like the look of the DE so far so quite fancy it.

[#12]

I assume you loaded a "live" DVD for Mint?
You then started an install.
It should install some files, ask for some stuff about what country etc, do disk partioning, then download a load of files.
Whilst it does this, it displays some adverts about how woderful Mint is.
There should be no spinning Circles etc

[#13]

OK, I have a problem then. Everything upto loading files and how wonderful mint is. The box saying how wonderful mint is disappears and I just get the constant mouse spinning circle. Jesus christ, I used to like how easy this was. Been looking at the mint help, seems there's an issue with nvidia amd cards but I think that's if it won't boot cd or doesn't boot into desktop after installation.

[#14]

Did you see a bit about writing GRUB?
You could take a chance and try rebooting - from disk. 

[#15]

Quote

Did you see a bit about writing GRUB?

No didn't see that. I left it for a while and rebooted but it just booted back into my ubuntu installation.