Hello!

My other PC needs some upgrade, because it cannot run many of the Lunux distributions. I installed Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu MATE 15.04, OpenSUSE 13.2 with KDE, GNOME and Xfce environment. They all crash the system immediately after booting, I even don't have the time to go and change the Nouveau driver and see if this solves the problem. The only exception is Ubuntu MATE 15.04, it works, but only if I turn off the Compiz mode in the "MATE Tweak" window.

In most cases I get screen very similar to this:


Now I'm using Ubuntu 14.04, but I experience some problems too. NVIDIA legacy 304 works better then Nouveau, bit it doesn't help much.

I'm not sure, I'm n00b, but I reckon all those problems are caused by the graphic card.

The hardware specs are:

System:
Ubuntu 14.04
GNOME 3.8.4 (Ubuntu 2015-04-02)
Kernel 3.19.0-30-generic (#34~14.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Fri Oct 2 22:09:39 UTC 2015)
GCC Version: 4.8 (x86_64-linux-gnu)
Xorg version: 1.17.1 (13 May 2015 04:35:05AM)

CPU:
Vendor: AuthenticAMD
CPUs: 2
Model name: AMD Athlon(tm) II X2 240 Processor
Frequency: 1600.000 MHz
L2 cache: 1024 KB
Bogomips: 5625.55
Numbering: family(16) model(6) stepping(2)
Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc rep_good nopl nonstop_tsc extd_apicid pni monitor cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs skinit wdt hw_pstate npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save vmmcall

Memory:
Memory total: 2756 MiB, free: 72%
Swap total: 7284 MiB, free: 100%

HDD:
SCSI device: scsi2
Vendor: ATA
Model: Hitachi HDT72106

Motherboard:
NVIDIA nForce 630a

Graphic card:
NVIDIA GeForce 7025

Partitions of HDD:
1. Ubuntu partition (/dev/sda6): 61gb (used 6.27gb)
2. Ubuntu swap (/dev/sda5): 7.11gb
3. NTFS partition (/dev/sda2) (no Windows): 527gb

I would like to run OpenSUSE Leap 42.1 when they release the stable version. Do you think this PC will be able to run this distro with the latest KDE and Plasma only if I change the graphic card with a decent one? If yes, can you recommend something?

Thanks in advance!

my suggestion, if you wish to be able to run Leap, would be to post on the openSource forums (as that's where you wish to be) after installing 13.2 and ask for assistance there as your issue is not KDE specific, specifying in the thread topic your graphics chip. Hopefully you'll then be in contact with other users of the same and possibly be running with the current setup.

As to a recommended gpu if all your not doing anything graphics intensive any reasonably low end and semi current gpu should work fine, either AMD or Nvidia. Google'ing will help you decide between the 2, guessing they both have there + & -'s thought the Nvidia's seems (iirc) to do better with there Linux proprietary drivers than AMD (not that for normal use this will matter).

I use a Nvidia 430gt which is probably 5 years old and their low end (except for oem) with the proprietary drivers with no issues.

Thanks, google01103