[Solved] Fresh Debian Jessie Install - Cinnamon can't start

[DEW]

Greetings everyone! I recently have started playing with various distros (Mostly just Zorin and Debian) and have been trying to find a GUI I can actually comfortably use without wanting to punch my screen. This lead me to cinnamon which looks like something I could actually use.

I performed a fresh installation of Debian Jessie without the desktop environment and print server (System Utilities or whatever that option is called was left checked) and after the system installed and booted I proceeded to login as the root and install cinnamon. Unfortunately afterwards my system would be nothing but a black screen with a box saying that cinnamon had crashed and was running in fallback mode.

However if I let a fresh installation install the default GUI of xfce and then perform the cinnamon installation, cinnamon will install and run. My question is why doesn't a clean install with cinnamon work but installing cinnamon after another gui does? I don't get any apparent error messages beyond cinnamon crashing and I'm still fairly new to Linux so if someone could get me pointed in the right direction to figure this out I'd greatly appreciate it.

[makh]

setup stable, if you cannot resolve testing issues.

OR ... Run google & read documentation.

As the name implies testing is for testing, not failsafe.

[mardybear]

Agreed about running testing as a new user. I've used linux for quite a few years and still prefer stable.

Didn't know Cinnamon was now in the Debian repositories...isn't it essentially gnome3? Query some type of Cinnamon bug that isn't recognizing or setting up your graphic card properly. Being forced into fallback mode usually indicates a graphic driver/configuration problem. Maybe Xfce is better able to configure your graphic hardware so when you later install Cinnamon your graphics are already properly set-up....just guessing.

[DEW]

With stable I have to go through an additional set of steps such as editing my /etc/apt/sources.list file with the appropriate repositories etc which is why I felt it best to use testing to see how this worked. With Debian Wheezy even after following the instructions I am hit with pages upon pages of errors and ultimately I can't install cinnamon on Wheezy without mixing and adding Jessie into it so I figured it was better to just use Jessie. I am aware that Jessie is testing but it natively contains Cinnamon within its repositories.

If you think xfce is configuring my system do you mean it is like installing drivers for my video card or something else that I could try before installing cinnamon to get it working?

[mardybear]

I guess that's why Cinnamon is available in testing - still lots of bugs to work out.

Yes...that's what i meant. If you have time and energy to troubleshoot then do a fresh Jessie Cinnamon install and check what video card driver it uses/sets up. Then repeat the procedure but install Jessie, Xfce then Cinnamon and see what differences there are in your graphic card recognition, graphic driver and configuration. This will require decent Debian/Linux knowledge, will require utilizing various CLI commands, knowing where to check for graphic configuration, etc. Some useul info to get you started but you'll need to learn much more...and the graphic issue is just my hunch...you may be chasing your tail.

Check the VGA section to determine your video card/driver utilized:

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lspci -v

Check here to see how your system configures graphic setup:

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/etc/X11/xorg.conf
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d

BTW, in testing this will just be the first of probably many issues you will need to fix. So if this is more of a hobby/learning experience then go fot it...but if you need a solid reliable computer then just use Wheezy with gnome3 and you will probably have a very similar user experience (without hair loss). I'm ignorant of Cinnamon but it's probably not much different than gnome3 - is it?

[DEW]

Thanks for those commands, I will try them out in a bit and post the results here.

Yea, I expected plenty of bugs to work out but I probably won't be switching to Linux for another year or two as of right now so by then Jessie & Cinnamon will have hopefully been smoothed out and moved to stable.

I definitely have the time and energy to troubleshoot these things as I am actually majoring in network & system administration, I just mostly know Windows and have only in recent years decided to even consider Linux outside of the server world as Windows 8 is an unholy abomination and Microsoft seems determined to keep heading in that direction along with further cloud integration in the soon to be released Windows 9. So with that in mind I figured I would start getting ready to jump ship when Windows 7 becomes to old/dated for me to use and have begun only purchasing Win/Mac/Nix compatible games on steam so that no matter what platform I end up over the years I'll be covered. Basically I'm just doing the exact same stuff I did in DOS and on server-core installations but I just have to learn the Linux equivalent commands of everything, kind of like learning a different dialect of a language you already speak I guess.

It is relatively similar at first glance but cinnamon has more of a windows type start menu much like kde/xfce which is just what I prefer to use.

[mardybear]

Basically I'm just doing the exact same stuff I did in DOS and on server-core installations but I just have to learn the Linux equivalent commands of everything, kind of like learning a different dialect of a language you already speak I guess.

Agreed. Jessie will just steepen the learning curve, but you'll learn more, faster. Based on your background i'm sure you'll do fine. If you make progress with your Cinnamon issue update this thread and mark solved if applicable to help others.

[DEW]

I did a clean install with just the default xfce again and entered the lspci -v command but it pretty much just spammed my screen with all the hardware in my system, I went to where it mentioned my video card (R9 280) and it detected it as a 7950 (which it basically is) but it made no mention of any driver. Next I tried to check those xorg.conf/.d files but they didn't exist.

Next I installed Cinnamon and repeated the above steps but got the same results. I figured that maybe this was as a result of the fact that I hadn't yet installed the drivers for my GPU so I went and got them, installed linux-headers-amd64 and then the proprietary drivers. At the end of the installation it stated there were some errors but when I went to the log file the text was basically impossible to read no matter what I did to it.

After rebooting the system xfce/cinnamon no longer startup, typing startx goes through some stuff but ultimately states that it can't connect to the xorg server or something like that.

Time to put my Google-Fu into practice and figure out what all I did wrong/could be missing. I will keep checking/posting back here.

[mardybear]

I did a clean install with just the default xfce again and entered the lspci -v command but it pretty much just spammed my screen with all the hardware in my system, I went to where it mentioned my video card (R9 280) and it detected it as a 7950 (which it basically is) but it made no mention of any driver.

As before, these commands are just the start - many more to learn.

Use the man(ual) pages to learn more about commands - often faster and more convenient than googling.

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man lspci

Sometimes lcpci -vvv will give more valuable information.

lsmod shows kernel modules currently loaded (long list) but you can sort via something like:

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lsmod | grep intel

...or ati or nvidia or whatever.

Anyway, glad you're still hard at it. Take care.

[dasein]

Yea, I expected plenty of bugs to work out but I probably won't be switching to Linux for another year or two as of right now so by then Jessie & Cinnamon will have hopefully been smoothed out and moved to stable.

Given that time is not a consideration, I'd encourage you to put your Debian installation project on hold for just a little while. Right now, and for the next couple of months, problems in Testing are only going to get worse as devs scramble to get something/anything into Testing before the freeze. Thus many of the problems you'd fight during the next few weeks won't be indicative of anything (except haste), and won't help you learn anything generally useful/applicable.

[sunrat]

I went to where it mentioned my video card (R9 280) and it detected it as a 7950

Radeon graphics card, you probably need to install firmware-linux-nonfree which contains microcode to make it run properly.

[DEW]

I went to where it mentioned my video card (R9 280) and it detected it as a 7950

Radeon graphics card, you probably need to install firmware-linux-nonfree which contains microcode to make it run properly.

Tried this among several other things, made no difference unfortunately....

I'm also testing/trying to get things working with both the open source and proprietary drivers for my card to no avail so far =/