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You are here: Home / General Technology / Fix the Linux Mint video error

Fix the Linux Mint video error

September 8, 2014 by Gary 36 Comments

Linux MintLinux Mint Cinnamon proves that a free operating system can be easy to use and extremely reliable. Whilst the default Ubuntu desktop is kind of similar to Apple OS desktop, the Cinnamon desktop of Linux Mint makes transitioning from Windows very intuitive.

An issue I battled to resolve however when running Linux Mint in a virtual machine with VirtualBox is that the video quality was really bad and there was always an error. The error was as follows:

'Cinnamon is currently running without video hardware' error.Running in software rendering mode
Cinnamon is currently running without video hardware acceleration and, as a result, you may observe much higher than normal CPU usage.
There could be a problem with your drivers or some other issue. For the best experience, it is recommended that you only use this mode for troubleshooting purposes.

Luckily there is a really simple fix for this problem and it doesn’t take any knowledge of the terminal or drivers or similar. It involves a simple checkbox.

Just follow these instructions and your video will be displaying perfectly in Linux Mint:

  1. If running, shut down your Linux Mint VM (Virtual Machine).
  2. In Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager alternate click your Linux Mint VM.
  3. Click Settings.
  4. Click Display.
  5. Click to select Enable 3D Acceleration (you won’t be able to select this if your Mint VM is running).
  6. Click OK.

That’s all there is to it. When you next start your Mint VM you’ll notice that video displays well and the error message is gone. Problem solved.

What you need to know about using Linux Mint on Oracle VirtualBox

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Filed Under: General Technology Tagged With: free software, hardware, how to, Linux, Software, tutorials

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Comments

  1. Alan German says

    December 2, 2014 at 2:03 am

    Gary – Many thanks for posting this fix. Works perfectly – Alan

    Reply
    • josh says

      August 12, 2015 at 1:27 am

      Thanks! You are a savior.

      Reply
    • riyuu says

      December 22, 2016 at 9:39 pm

      A reinstall of the “VBOXADDITIONS” worked for me.
      The issue was that after an update of the kernel, all drivers were erased .

      Reply
  2. Rick says

    December 29, 2014 at 3:50 am

    Thanks mate!

    Reply
  3. Alex says

    January 4, 2015 at 8:07 am

    Thank you, Gary, for your posting. Save people lots of time.

    Alex

    Reply
  4. luca says

    January 16, 2015 at 2:11 pm

    Hi Gary, that looks very detailed, but I have 2 problems:
    1- how to I find out “if running, shut down your Linux Mint VM (Virtual Machine)” and launch “In Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager alternate click your Linux Mint VM”.
    2- rendering mode works great for installation if launched in safe prompt mode, but not on normal start up.

    I am in a bundle. any help is really appreciated.
    thank you and regards,
    Luca

    Reply
    • Gary says

      January 19, 2015 at 10:43 am

      Hi Luca, I have to admit that I’m really not sure of the answer to your issues. Anyone else?

      Reply
  5. Karl Guenther says

    January 31, 2015 at 4:33 am

    The virtualbox click on the 3d acceleration option will work for some. But, I am seeing a problem in Linux Mint 17 under Virtualbox. I see that itisalist has identified the problem in the link https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=180451. I did do an apt-get upgrade on Linux Mints. I still have the problem. I don’t want to backlevel software to fix that itisalist demonstrated.

    Reply
    • Dean Aria says

      July 24, 2016 at 5:10 am

      For this to work, you also need to ‘insert’ the up to date version of virtual box guest addition CD and run it to ensure you are running the latest VM flavored drivers.

      Reply
  6. Laurent says

    March 1, 2015 at 6:33 am

    Thanks for the tip !

    Reply
  7. austin says

    May 17, 2015 at 4:20 am

    this is great except for the fact that im not running in VM

    Reply
    • Daniel says

      January 17, 2017 at 10:23 am

      Did you try this?

      Edit /etc/default/grub and change

      GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quite splash nomodeset” —>

      GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”text”

      update-grup and reboot

      It worked for me – Linux Mint 18.1 Cinnamon – hp g4 radeon gc

      Reply
  8. Valdo Carvalho says

    August 7, 2015 at 11:16 am

    I have changed my VM setting exactly how it was explained above but it didn’t work for me. the same message saying that cinnamon is working without hardware acceleration still shows. I tried ubunto now ia running debian both with 3D acceleration option ticked but still slow ….

    Reply
  9. balaji says

    October 18, 2015 at 7:51 pm

    Hello sir,
    I just installed debain in my laptop
    When i open it it gives me the same error how to fix it
    ?????
    Please help me

    Reply
  10. balaji says

    October 20, 2015 at 7:20 pm

    I installed debain 8 in my laptop is shows me the same error
    And my cpu usage toches 1000
    I m using amd pocessor with amd hd 6 grapix

    How to solve it please help me

    Reply
  11. Bill Jones says

    November 3, 2015 at 6:54 am

    So…… no one knows???

    Reply
  12. Simpler says

    November 6, 2015 at 6:26 am

    Thank you very much. Simple solution.

    Reply
  13. Ludo says

    November 17, 2015 at 6:50 am

    i’ m not running in VM so this solution you giving here is not what is helping here.
    Linux runs not in VM, but is installed on the hard drive as the only software, no vm!
    The problem is the video card driver won’t load, how to fix this, the standard solutions for this won’t work.
    So what now?

    Reply
  14. Leo Ufitmtsev says

    January 24, 2016 at 1:59 am

    Thank you so much for tip~!

    Reply
  15. Manasses Villaca (Brazil) says

    January 29, 2016 at 10:45 pm

    Thanks for your collaboration!
    I am also using Linux on my hard drive and having the same problem, could you help to fix it?
    Thnks!

    Reply
  16. Allen Simco says

    January 31, 2016 at 5:19 am

    I have searched, researched, etc. for five weeks. Nada!

    “Solutions” work for some – lucky ones.

    Same problem on two computers.

    Adios Mint.

    Sugarlips McGraw

    Reply
  17. Delebre says

    February 5, 2016 at 2:00 am

    Well, before I found this site, I had already had this enabled. I still get the error:

    http://i63.tinypic.com/2bbo6s.png

    Reply
  18. Here says

    April 14, 2016 at 3:35 am

    I would try this if I knew how to shut down my Linux Mint VM and open Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager

    Reply
  19. Yang says

    May 14, 2016 at 3:21 pm

    That saved my day! Thanks!

    Reply
  20. Nicolas D says

    July 23, 2016 at 4:31 am

    I’ve enabled 3D acceleration under VirtualBox’s video options and still getting a warning message in Mint 18 about video hardware acceleration not working 🙁

    Reply
    • Eric says

      August 6, 2016 at 1:42 am

      Same here.

      VirtualBox Display setting does have the Acceleration: option for 3D acceleration switched on.

      Reply
    • andrea says

      August 29, 2016 at 12:52 pm

      you need to install virtual box additions:

      http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/faq/id-1957309/install-virtualbox-guest-additions-linux-mint.html

      ciao,
      Andrea

      Reply
      • Eric says

        August 29, 2016 at 5:58 pm

        Thank you for that suggestion but the VirtualBox Additions were already installed.

        The thing that did work was to increase the amount of Video RAM for the virtual machine.

        Reply
  21. Keama Iruzuka says

    September 15, 2016 at 9:18 am

    I am having this exact error. Except that I am not running it with a Virtual Machine.
    I’m running a Dell Inspiron mini 10 (1010)
    I just installed Linux Mint 17.3 Rosa and I have no idea how to fix this issue since I’ve never had it on any of my other computers that I put to the save version of Linux.
    Thank you for your help!

    Reply
  22. rickfalck says

    October 15, 2016 at 7:41 am

    Followed your steps exactly and it does not fix the problem. Still running in software rendering mode.

    Reply
  23. therealmattslay says

    December 24, 2016 at 3:40 am

    I need a solution for this same issue when running in Hyper-V on Windows 10???

    Reply
  24. Pat says

    January 1, 2017 at 10:00 am

    Thanks!

    Reply
  25. Jeffrey says

    February 22, 2017 at 8:00 am

    I am running Linux Mint 18 and I had to install VirtualBox Guest Additions and enable 3-D acceleration to fix it.

    Reply
  26. Omar says

    March 15, 2017 at 10:17 am

    1- Installed “Guest additions”
    2- Enabled “3D Acceleration”

    It works like a charm, Thanks

    Reply
  27. Ahmed Reda says

    August 18, 2017 at 11:37 pm

    Hi … how i can solve this is a real installation not on VMware ?

    Reply
  28. Alan says

    April 24, 2018 at 12:32 pm

    I did this. The error went away, but now my desktop is 10 times too bright! I have a NVDa card in my win 10 host. The display was fine without 3D acceleration, but I had the error. Now I don’t have the error, but my screen is too bright. Any ideas?

    Reply

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