Nvidia Driver Issue

[brainsys]

The upgrade from 14.10 to 15.04 went smoothly on all my systems. Everything working just fine (with a little tweaking of Plasma 5). That's the good news.

One system prompted me to upgrade the Nvidia driver from 304.125 to 340.76. I do as I'm told but after much gnashing I ended up with a blank black screen. No matter how hard I googled, no matter what I tried I could not get a working desktop back. It would freeze or just crash on the splash screen. I couldn't revert. So I re-installed Kubuntu which was a bit of a pain and made sure I stuck with the nouveau driver.

Except it don't sit well with my GeForce 8200. Strange flashes when screenchanges and Konsole is not displaying properly. I would like to go back to 304.125 which worked great under 14.10 and 15.04. The problem is I really don't want to crash the system again. If, using Driver Manager I get stuck I would like a clear, safe and sure reversion plan to Nouveau.

What settings and files should I preserve - that I could put back to return to Nouveau?

TIA

[ronw]

If you get stuck again, and can get to a console with Ctl+Alt+F2, purging nvidia-3xx, should take care of all the bits needed to get you back to nouveau.

[brainsys]

I did do that (many times), reinstalled desktop and everything else. Either my enthusiasm for throwing the kitchen sink at it broke it even more or - and this is my suspicion - the original settings/files got disappeared so no reversion was possibe. Some stuff wouldn't work because upstart would not start from the recovery console. It was a horrible mess.

That's why I love 'em all nouveau files and settings copied to a USB stick before I try the 304 drivers. Otherwise I'm just going to have to try cloning the drive.

[Teunis]

After a fresh install with nVidia 246 I had several problems, 340 was no better, reverting to 304 made them go away.

[brainsys]

Oh - the power of Kubuntu Forums! Once posted a patch immediately became available in the repository for Nouveau. Last night's update (codec?) has made the desktop experience much, much smoother. Its eliminated my immediate need to return to the Nvidia fold.

Happy

[Guest]

Hi, I too am having trouble with an Nvidia graphics card. My Machine is a desktop, specs below:

Processor	AMD Phenom II 1055t
Memory	8 GB
Graphics	Nvidia GT670 Ti
Hard Disk	1TB
CD/DVD	rewriter

OS Ubuntu 14.04

I currently have graphics shows Gallium 0.4 on NVE6.

For most things this is ok, but the main thing that I want to run on the machine is X-Plane 10 and it wants the latest Nvidia driver.
I downloaded NVIDIA-Linux-x86-346.72.run from Nvidia's site but don't know where to go from here.

Can anyone out there help please?

[mannenrok]

On systems with an intel Icore cpu there is an videocard built in. Under windows you can switch between an nvidia and the intel gpu. Sadly this is not the case under linux.

[Teunis]

It's a few years ago I played with Bumblebee and it did allow for switching (of sorts) between the Intel an nVidia cards.
I've read this system has now very much improved but if needed I typically select the card via the BIOS menu.

Check the repositories for Nvidia Optimus.

[bendy]

No problems for me doing an upgrade with the proprietary driver on my GTX650 card. I was on the 331 driver when running 14.10, and after upgrading the driver manager recommended 346. I followed the recommendation and everything is working fine for me.

I guess there may be issues finding the best driver if you have an older card (i.e. an 8200 mentioned by the OP).