Cinnamon Crashes at Startup

[Teshka]

Hi, everyone. I am trying out Linux Cinnamon for the first time, and the very first thing I get when starting it up at the desktop is a message telling me that Cinnamon has crashed and if I want to restart. When I do restart nothing happens, it crashes again.

I can't find the terminal, and it doesn't seem like the shutdown or restart buttons exist anywhere obvious.

I am running this on an old system, Dell Dimension 2350 by CD. With graphics, the system uses a Radeon (can't find version). I can't find the terminal to give any additional error information.

Does anyone know how to fix this? Thank you!

[tdockery97]

That model of Dell is an old, weak PC. Cinnamon is probably too much for it to handle. In my opinion you should try either the Xfce or MATE edition.

[Teshka]

I did read that that might be the issue. I'm new to Linux; I'm not sure I understand how a desktop could be too much work for a computer, old or not. What would it possibly need so that it can in fact handle Cinnamon? I was able to find the terminal and run the command: inxi -Fxz

Code: Select all

System:    Host: mint Kernel: 3.13.0-37-generic i686 (32 bit, gcc: 4.8.2) Desktop: Gnome Distro: Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca
Machine:   System: Dell product: Dimension 2350 version: A01
           Mobo: Dell model: 07W080 version: A00 Bios: Mitac version: A01 date: 12/17/2002
CPU:       Single core Intel Pentium 4 CPU (-UP-) cache: 512 KB flags: (sse sse2) bmips: 4784.57 clocked at 2392.286 MHz 
Graphics:  Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] RV280 [Radeon 9200 PRO] bus-ID: 01:06.0 
           X.Org: 1.15.1 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) FAILED: intel Resolution: 1024x768@60.0hz 
           GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI R200 (RV280 5960) x86/MMX/SSE2 TCL DRI2 GLX Version: 1.3 Mesa 10.1.3 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio:     Card: Intel 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller driver: snd_intel8x0 ports: e000 e400 bus-ID: 00:1f.5
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture ver: k3.13.0-37-generic
Network:   Card: Broadcom BCM4401 100Base-T driver: b44 ver: 2.0 bus-ID: 01:09.0
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 60.0GB (-) 1: id: /dev/sda model: ST360015A size: 60.0GB temp: 25C 
Partition: ID: / size: 248M used: 36M (15%) fs: overlayfs 
RAID:      No RAID devices detected - /proc/mdstat and md_mod kernel raid module present
Sensors:   None detected - is lm-sensors installed and configured?
Info:      Processes: 126 Uptime: 8 min Memory: 143.2/494.3MB Runlevel: 2 Gcc sys: 4.8.2 Client: Shell inxi: 1.8.4 

The interesting part of this is the word (which was highlighted in red) "failed" under the Graphics section.

[Teshka]

Ok, since I was running a live session of Linux Mint, I chose to install it to see if that might fix the issue. It did in fact fix the issue and I no longer am getting any crashes at startup for Cinnamon. It is however quite slow (opening windows, terminal, etc), and so I instead installed the MATE desktop which is much faster. Thanks for your help.