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I hope somebody can help

I have installed Ubuntu 64bit 19.10. I have an old NVIDIA video card, 9300GS, I want to install the drivers in Ubuntu

I went to Additional Drivers and switched the driver from nouveau to NVIDIA (driver version 340). When I restarted, the GUI wouldn't load, it just gave an off-blank screen

I went to the terminal (Ctrl+Alt+F1) and with help from the internet, i run: sudo apt-get purge nvidia-*

But GUI wouldn't load until I run: 'sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop` (running this made it switch back to the nouveau drivers, and i guess re-installed the GUI, but then I was back where I started):

I am guessing my card doesn't like v340, however, when I run ubuntu-drivers devices, its the only version it recommends.

I repeated the process for v331 (just kinda stabbing in the dark, same thing, but this time i get a blinking underscore, a forced login screen (despite having auto-login turned on), mouse freezes, I guess OS freezes because I cannot tty now (Ctrl +Alt+F1), and have to go into recovery mode to undo everything ). What is the magic sauce here? I know its possible because i had it running on Ubuntu 12.04; NVIDIA-240 gave a blank login on that machine, but I played around with installing NVIDIA-173 and running NVIDIA-204-updates and got it working. it was so long ago I don't remember what i did.

I have read other threads and they mostly resort to purging the drivers and trying again. Others refer to an older installs where workarounds no longer work due to version changes and files not being there. I really want to understand and learn how to remedy this.

Any help appreciated (not good at Linux, so be patient with me with regards to syntax and lingo, thank you!)

Kevin Bowen
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Ginko
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2 Answers2

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I wiped the hard drive and installed 18.04 LTS

I followed the below steps, and it worked right out of the box. I'm not sure what is up with 19.10, but it just would not install these nvidia drivers right at all. Crashed on start up and gave a login screen despite having login turned off.

Activites > Additional Drivers > Check Nvidia 340, > Apply Changes > Reboot

Done!

Ginko
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Using NVIDIA's Advanced Driver Search https://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx your card actually shows that you can use either the 340 or 304 driver. I do recommend that you use the Graphics-Drivers PPA for setting up the driver instead of downloading the driver from NVIDIA. The PPA driver is usually tested for install into Ubuntu before it is posted in the PPA.

Note: Apparently, the 304 driver no longer works. Try to go with the 340 driver but installed from the PPA.

To setup the PPA, open a terminal window by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T. Make sure that any other NVIDIA driver has been removed sudo apt remove --autoremove nvidia-* or sudo apt purge nvidia-* then type in the following to setup the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update

Then to install your driver

sudo apt-get install nvidia-340

Or you should be able to use the Additional Drivers of the Software and Updates, or run the ubuntu-drivers autoinstall. After the driver is installed, reboot the system so that the driver activates in the kernel.

Terrance
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