Bad video Dell Inspiron 17r 5737 newer than 12.04.2 ubuntu

14.04 is LTS

Have you tried a non-compositing desktop like XFCE?

At this point, I can't say if the desktop would make a difference. The problem shows up much sooner than after loging in. In any version later than 12.04.2, the bad video is immediately obvious as soon as the splash screen shows up on the live cd. This is before ubuntu is even installed. After installed, the bad video shows up before even logging in. I normally use LXDE, but due to installation problems, I haven't gotten far enough to have it installed. I will give it a try, though.

Some further information is that on anything later than 12.04.2, the bad video shows up immediately, even on the live cd. With version 12.04.0, the video on the live cd works properly, but as I just found out, only if I reboot from a succesful boot (such as windows 7). If I boot from power off, live cd 12.04.0 turns off the screen and hangs after I make the selection "Try Ubuntu" toward the end of the boot process. I believe 12.04.1 and 12.04.2 behave the same way, although I'm not sure about 12.04.2 now. I think that earlier on I had confused 12.04.0 and 12.04.2. However, now I'm sure that installing 12.04.0 makes the video work properly, and that 12.04.3 and 12.04.4 as well as 13.10 and 14.04 beta2 exhibit the bad video problem.

I have one installation in which I installed 12.04.0 then upgraded to 12.10 which exhibits the bad video problem. I've also installed unity and lxde. The bad video shows up everywhere including the initial ubuntu splash screen, the dm, and both desktop environments.

The problems that you have might be caused by the different versions of the X stack as described in https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack (although I then would have expected bad video also on 12.04.2).

If that is really the case, I see just two options, namely staying on 12.04 or upgrading to higher Ubuntu releases with manual pinning of the xorg packages to the older version.

Thanks Manfred. You really helped clarify what was going on. I realized that the problem is a lack of support for my chipset, so I created bug report #1300349 out of this discussion.

In ubuntu 14.04, installing a mainline kernel fixes the problem:

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.15-rc2-trusty/

Now, what I don't know is if it's ok to install more recent kernels:

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.15-rc3-utopic/

The one above is labeled utopic, but I suppose since it's mainline it should work on trusty as well.

I can confirm that this works "out of the box" with 15.04!

I think there is a regression with 18.04. This issue has re-appeared. "nomodeset" "fixes" it but obviously isn't ideal. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1036968/no-red-color-on-screen-after-installing-18-04-on-dell-inspiron-3737/1047143#1047143 sounds like someone else is having the same problem.