[SOLVED] nvidia driver install

[bobbicat]

I have always installed the nvidia driver first thing when setting up a new version of Kubuntu.

Now that, on Kubuntu 1910, the driver is on the installation media, will it be automatically installed 'out of the box' as a part of the set-up, requiring no input from me, the user?

[oshunluvr]

Not usually I think? You can install it the normal way or use the Driver Manager in System Settings.

[acheron]

Now that, on Kubuntu 1910, the driver is on the installation media, will it be automatically installed 'out of the box' as a part of the set-up, requiring no input from me, the user?

As long as you tick the box for 3rd party drivers etc, then yes it should work for 390, 430 and 435 drivers.

[RogueScholar]

I've been getting some sort of race condition for kwin_x11 and plasmashell (30+% CPU activity idling each) with the repository NVIDIA drivers for my ThinkPad T420s (NVS 4200M running 390.127). Was gonna go down that rabbit hole and then just decided to purge them and go back to the NVIDIA .run installer (https://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us) that never lets me down. I saw in my Xorg.log.0 that it had to do with the GLX driver not loading as expected, but that's as far as I looked.

If the dust settles in the next few days I'll see if I can't file a proper bug report for it, but thought I'd pull your coat about the possibility and the workaround just in case, @bobbicat.

[bobbicat]

I've been getting some sort of race condition for kwin_x11 and plasmashell (30+% CPU activity idling each) with the repository NVIDIA drivers for my ThinkPad T420s (NVS 4200M running 390.127). Was gonna go down that rabbit hole and then just decided to purge them and go back to the NVIDIA .run installer (https://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us) that never lets me down. I saw in my Xorg.log.0 that it had to do with the GLX driver not loading as expected, but that's as far as I looked.

If the dust settles in the next few days I'll see if I can't file a proper bug report for it, but thought I'd pull your coat about the possibility and the workaround just in case, @bobbicat.

...thanks for that Rogue, I'll try another install of Kubuntu 1910 from the latest daily build, then try an uninstall, just to see how it all works out. I might have learnt something and this would be one way to find out.

[bobbicat]

I re-installed a version of 1910 from the latest daily-live versions [eoan-desktop-amd64.iso 2019-10-11 05:35].

As long as you tick the box for 3rd party drivers etc, then yes it should work for 390, 430 and 435 drivers.

Thanks, Acheron, that worked good for me.

I've been getting some sort of race condition for kwin_x11 and plasmashell (30+% CPU activity idling each) with the repository NVIDIA drivers for my ThinkPad T420s (NVS 4200M running 390.127). Was gonna go down that rabbit hole and then just decided to purge them and go back to the NVIDIA .run installer (https://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us) that never lets me down. I saw in my Xorg.log.0 that it had to do with the GLX driver not loading as expected, but that's as far as I looked.

If the dust settles in the next few days I'll see if I can't file a proper bug report for it, but thought I'd pull your coat about the possibility and the workaround just in case, @bobbicat.

Immediately on logging into my install of 1910 I was presented with a list of updates, largely relating to nvidia, amongst which were mentions for GLX drivers, I wonder if that was a fix for your issues? I didn't encounter any problems on this version myself.

[bobbicat]

After a closer look at my installation of Kubuntu I noticed that nvidia drivers are still not completely sorted out.
I report my results here but I think this issue might well be resolved when the 1910 release candidate is published in a few days.
It seems I have version 430 of the driver installed when 435 is recommended.
[note: the nvidia-driver-430 has been carried through from my previous installation of Kubuntu 1904]

Perhaps a purge of nvidia-driver-430 will get things sorted, I'll give that a try later.

I looked at my installed drivers:

ubuntu-drivers devices

== /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/0000:01:00.0 ==
modalias : pci:v000010DEd000011C0sv00001043sd0000843Bbc03sc00i00
vendor   : NVIDIA Corporation
model    : GK106 [GeForce GTX 660]
driver   : nvidia-340 - distro non-free
driver   : nvidia-driver-390 - distro non-free
driver   : nvidia-driver-435 - distro non-free recommended
driver   : nvidia-driver-430 - distro non-free
driver   : xserver-xorg-video-nouveau - distro free builtin

So I attempted an upgrade to 435 [recommended]:

sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies.
nvidia-driver-435 : Depends: libnvidia-gl-435 (= 435.21-0ubuntu2) but it is not going to be installed
            Depends: nvidia-dkms-435 (= 435.21-0ubuntu2) but it is not going to be installed
            Depends: nvidia-compute-utils-435 (= 435.21-0ubuntu2) but it is not going to be installed
            Depends: libnvidia-encode-435 (= 435.21-0ubuntu2) but it is not going to be installed
            Depends: nvidia-utils-435 (= 435.21-0ubuntu2) but it is not going to be installed
            Depends: xserver-xorg-video-nvidia-435 (= 435.21-0ubuntu2) but it is not going to be installed
            Depends: libnvidia-cfg1-435 (= 435.21-0ubuntu2) but it is not going to be installed
            Depends: libnvidia-ifr1-435 (= 435.21-0ubuntu2) but it is not going to be installed
            Recommends: libnvidia-decode-435:i386 (= 435.21-0ubuntu2)
            Recommends: libnvidia-encode-435:i386 (= 435.21-0ubuntu2)
            Recommends: libnvidia-ifr1-435:i386 (= 435.21-0ubuntu2)
            Recommends: libnvidia-fbc1-435:i386 (= 435.21-0ubuntu2)
            Recommends: libnvidia-gl-435:i386 (= 435.21-0ubuntu2)
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

[bobbicat]

In an attempt to correct the issue I purged the nvidia-driver-430 files.

sudo apt --purge autoremove nvidia*

reboot

after a reboot [then, at boot menu, pressing 'e' and using 'nomodeset' in front of 'quiet splash'] installed nvidia-driver-435[recommended] files:

[FONT=menlo]sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

reboot
[/FONT]

Success!!

I'll mark this thread solved after a while, when I'm sure it is all settled down.

Conclusion:
My experience is that the nvidia-driver-430 is not upgraded during a dist-upgrade form 1904 to 1910 and that a purge needs to be performed to get nvidia-driver-435[recommended] into place.
Performing this purge is a workaround, but I will mark the thread solved as I feel 'the ends justify the means' until the developers address the issue.