I am not a “power user”, so nouveau has worked well with Mint and Ubuntu Mate for about 3 years.
When I looked into how to install Nvidia drivers, it seemed complicated to the point that I was afraid of messing stuff up.
If I can manage the nvidia driver, OK. If not, I would juts as soon get rid of Neon and install Pop! OS in its place.
No no, it’s fairly simple. Pop OS, Neon, all are Ubuntu derivatives, so, the process everywhere and the package is same. Lemme help you.
sudo ubuntu-drivers devices
First share the output of this.
Nothing. It just dropped to a new line
I also installed software-properties-qt (as was suggested in another forum) and no devices or drivers were listed in the tab.
Do you have a hybrid driver setup? i.e Nvidia + integrated?
No, it’s a plug-in GPU and the board does not have integrated AFAIK. I suspect the card is just old for what we’re trying to do
It should, else I don’t know how it’s working. But, the OS isn’t able to see your device anymore. Give this a try may be?
sudo ubuntu-drivers install
if this doesn’t work, try
sudo ubuntu-drivers nvidia:535
Ofcourse reboot then
all the available drivers are already installed
Wait. Are you sure? The card is GTS 240
That command is generic for all nvidia gpus
no such commend
Same problem here.
Tested on KDE Neon 6.x with two old(?) nVidia cards and nouveau drivers:
nVidia GeForce 320M for laptops
nVidia GeForce 8400GS for desktops
Nouveau worked very well until Mesa-21.x; these hard freezes appeared starting from Mesa-22.x, also on OpenSUSE, Kubuntu, etc.
The system is extremely stable, but if I try to put a widget on the desktop, I got a hard freeze; nothing works anymore (mouse, keyboard, etc) and I have to press the power button.
Same behavior if I open SystemMonitor; this happens because also SystemMonitor uses widgets.
Only widgets that display text cause the freeze; for instance, the analog clock widget does not cause any freeze.
nVidia proprietary drivers (340.108) solve this problem, but this is not a good solution. Those drivers are too old, they probably have security holes and with newer versions of X11/Wayland they are very slow.
This is what happens before the crash; icons and text become filled squares:
The ubuntu-drivers command is a required dependency by the Neon desktop package. If you are missing it then it’s likely your system installation is broken. What is the output from apt policy ubuntu-drivers-common ?
This seems like a serious issue with the nouveau driver. You should report it to the Mesa project.
I suspect that Mesa developers are dropping support for older video cards; that would be really sad.
You may be on to something here. the output is:
ubuntu-drivers-common:
Installed: 1:0.9.7.6ubuntu3.1
Candidate: 1:0.9.7.6ubuntu3.1
Version table:
*** 1:0.9.7.6ubuntu3.1 500
500 Index of /ubuntu noble-updates/main amd64 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
1:0.9.7.6ubuntu3 500
500 Index of /ubuntu noble/main amd64 Packages
That tells me that ubuntu-drivers is a command that should work for you. If it doesn’t, that means that something is broken.
It could be that the command that is installed by that package is missing or broken - I would try to run dpkg -V ubuntu-drivers-common that should output nothing if everything is OK.
Or your PATH environment is set incorrectly - which test should return /usr/bin/test if everything is OK.
You called it! No output on the first one, and /usr/bin/test on the second one.
Can we assume that there is something fishy between mesa and nouveau, triggered by running an old Nvidia card?
It bears repeating that I have had this NVidia card over three years, and nouveau works fine on Ubuntu Mate and Mint. This is why I want to avoid reinstalling Neon or going to other KDE distros without knowing what is causing this.
Is there a way to either repair mesa or perhaps roll it back if advisable?
and just in case this helps, here is the output for glxinfo -B:
name of display: :0
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
Extended renderer info (GLX_MESA_query_renderer):
Vendor: Mesa (0x10de)
Device: NV92 (0x607)
Version: 24.0.9
Accelerated: yes
Video memory: 2031MB
Unified memory: no
Preferred profile: core (0x1)
Max core profile version: 3.3
Max compat profile version: 3.3
Max GLES1 profile version: 1.1
Max GLES[23] profile version: 3.0
Memory info (GL_ATI_meminfo):
VBO free memory - total: 1625 MB, largest block: 1625 MB
VBO free aux. memory - total: 838859 MB, largest block: 838859 MB
Texture free memory - total: 1625 MB, largest block: 1625 MB
Texture free aux. memory - total: 838859 MB, largest block: 838859 MB
Renderbuffer free memory - total: 1625 MB, largest block: 1625 MB
Renderbuffer free aux. memory - total: 838859 MB, largest block: 838859 MB
Memory info (GL_NVX_gpu_memory_info):
Dedicated video memory: 2031 MB
Total available memory: 1050606 MB
Currently available dedicated video memory: 1625 MB
OpenGL vendor string: Mesa
OpenGL renderer string: NV92
OpenGL core profile version string: 3.3 (Core Profile) Mesa 24.0.9-0ubuntu0.2
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 3.30
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profileOpenGL version string: 3.3 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 24.0.9-0ubuntu0.2
OpenGL shading language version string: 3.30
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL profile mask: compatibility profileOpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 3.0 Mesa 24.0.9-0ubuntu0.2
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.00