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I recently bought a Dell G15 5521 laptop. This has an Intel i7-12700H CPU, NVidia Geforce RTX 3060 6GB video card, 32GB RAM. I want to use this as a home machine and for software development.

It comes with Windows 11 Home pre-installed. I have installed XUbuntu 22.04 as a dual-boot. The basic XUbuntu desktop (Xfce) is now working.

According to these two links, I think that Ubuntu should be working (certified) on this spec:

However, I do note that these say: Pre-installed in some regions with a custom Ubuntu image that takes advantage of the system’s hardware features and may include additional software. Standard images of Ubuntu may not work well, or at all.

Initially, I had problems with random temporary freezes, but after some googling, I seem to have fixed this by adding this to the kernel command line in the Grub config: ibt=off acpi=off

However, I'm still having some significant issues.

HDMI port

Using the HDMI port. Nothing seems to recognise the HDMI port for an external monitor. This is a blocker for my intended usage.

I did some googling around this, found various suggestions about installing different NVidia drivers, but none are clear on details. I tried using Software Updater => Settings => Additional Drivers. This was originally set to use X.Org X.server -- Nouveau .... I changed this to use "NVIDIA driver (open kernel) metapackage from nvidia-driver-525-open (proprietary, tested)" This doesn't seem to have helped to recognise the HDMI port, so I have currently reverted this back to Nouveau.

System freezing on shutdown.

The system freezes on shutdown; it never completes, and I have to hold down the power key to complete the shutdown.

I am an experienced Linux user, though not experienced in diagnosing desktop issues such as these. I have been running XUbuntu on my previous laptop for many years. It generally "just works", and I have not had to dig in to diagnose display issues like these. I have also used Linux for professional software development.

My questions:

  • I'm currently on XUbuntu 22.04. Am I likely to have better luck if I upgrade to 22.10?

  • How to diagnose the HDMI behaviour? Again, which logs to look at. Various suggestions tell me to try a plethora of different NVidia drivers. Which ones are relevant, where should I get them from, if not just from the standard XUbuntu sources?

  • In the Ubuntu Software & Updates settings GUI, under Additional Drivers, it lists 8 different NVidia drivers, each with different numbers associated with them. Are these version numbers (bigger is better), or are they intended to match the hardware? If the latter, which should I choose on my system (NVidia Geforce RTX 3060 6GB video card).

  • If I really need to use the exact kernel which was used in the certification steps (5.14.0-1011-oem kernel), where do I get that from and how should I install it? uname -a currently shows: Linux DellG15 5.15.0-56-generic #62-Ubuntu SMP Tue Nov 22 19:54:14 UTC 2022 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

  • Any suggestions on how to diagnose the shutdown issues? Which log files should I be looking at? Which settings may be relevant?

  • What else should I be investigating?

Many thanks for any assistance.

Conor O'Neill
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1 Answers1

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Solved. After much frustration and very much trying multiple options, I have finally got my system working, using an external HDMI monitor, and not freezing on shutdown. I suspect that if I'd made the appropriate changes in the correct order, I might have got this working very quickly, but I have no idea exactly what ordering is required.

Hardware: Dell G15 5521 Special Edition laptop; purchased Dec 2022. Intel "12th generation" i7-12700H 24MB cache, 14 cores. NVidia Geforce RTX 3060 6GB video card.

A summary of my current relevant software settings is:

Thank you muchly to the very detailed answer which Gabriel Staples provided in this answer: Installed Ubuntu 22.04 and I experience frequent freezes and crashes (when using NVIDIA graphics card) and to Damian Dixon who pointed me to this: https://www.linuxcapable.com/install-nvidia-drivers-on-ubuntu-linux/

Notes.

The NVidia documentation says that you need to have Hybrid Graphics turned off (in your BIOS). When I tried to turn Hybrid graphics off, my system never managed to get into the graphics screens after boot. I had to leave this turned on while I tried various other permutations. I eventually removed 'acpi=off' from the grub command line, and now the various combination of settings is working with Hybrid graphics turned off.

Note that I had also succeeded with "NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-470.161.03", downloaded from NVidia website and installed manually from recovery mode. This is what gave me the confidence boost that I finally had something working, and then further adjustments can be made from the UI rather than having to drop into recovery mode from the boot menu each time.

Gabriel Staples
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Conor O'Neill
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