Gfilui

After a recent update (kernel?), I have begun to occasionally receive the message "Running in Low Graphics Mode" at boot (maybe half the time). I can tell it to use Default setting from the options it offers, and get by it, after which things look and work normally, even after some reboots.

I also usually get "System error detected, Report? at the same time, so I agree to report it.

Please note that I'm using 16.04 (fully updated), Gnome Flashback Metacity, with [AMD/ATI] Cape Verde PRO [Radeon HD 7750/8740 / R7 250E] .
This problem shows up no matter which of the above I'm using, or Unity.

roger@roger-desktop:~$ uname -a
Linux roger-desktop 4.4.0-124-generic #148-Ubuntu SMP Wed May 2 13:00:18 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I've seen some suggestions like:

• 
  sudo apt-get update


• 
  sudo apt-get remove ubuntu-desktop


• 
  sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop


• 
  sudo shutdown -r now

but these are all quite old, at least 3 years, up to 6 or more years, and some of the simple items in some of these (boot while holding (shift), just don't work, so I'm afraid of them.

It's unclear to me if this would wipe out my GNOME and Cinnamon, etc. installations, or if that is separate and safe. Please advise.

There appears to be plenty of memory and storage available.

roger@roger-desktop:~$ free -m
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 16013 3880 10410 363 1722 11443
Swap: 16348 0 16348

roger@roger-desktop:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 7.8G 0 7.8G 0% /dev
tmpfs 1.6G 9.6M 1.6G 1% /run
/dev/sda1 902G 77G 779G 9% /
tmpfs 7.9G 127M 7.7G 2% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 7.9G 0 7.9G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
cgmfs 100K 0 100K 0% /run/cgmanager/fs
tmpfs 1.6G 52K 1.6G 1% /run/user/1000

Also, if I simply go to 18.04 (I don't really want to just yet.) will it likely fix this or might this block or damage the upgrade?

I too experience this problem, a lot of googling and the following seems to have fixed it - but as you say it is intermittent, so I cant be certain yet.

cd /etc/default/
sudo gedit grub

Comment the line

#GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

and add line below turn off the splash screen and inspect boot log

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""

then run

sudo update-grub

and restart.