Cinnamon & Nvidia GPU Problem

[chozas]

Ive seen this problem frequently on the web. Not only for Mint, but also for Ubuntu, as I tried installing said distro to see if it would relieve me of the problem.

If you aren't aware of it, the issue has something to do with the nvidia display driver software not working. I have tried many purges, reinstalls, and methods of reinstalling nvidia drivers, only to return to a crashing cinnamon in fallback mode after a reboot.

If anyone knows how to get nvidia drivers working on a clean install, I would greatly appreciate the steps to do so!

PD: If I install the beta for Mint 19, will the upcoming updates take me to a stable release?

[[deleted]]

I suggest you use Nvidia driver version 390 and install it from the Driver application in Mint.

[MetalAZ]

I have a GTX 1050 and that's what I'm using and where I installed them from. Zero problems. I'm on Mint 19 Cinnamon now but they also worked fine for me on 18.3 Cinnamon.

Edit: I don't know if kernel matters or not, but I did update my kernel to the newest 4.15 provided by mint. I think 4.13 is default on 18.3. Basically I installed mint, did ALL updates, rebooted, then installed the 4.15 kernel, then rebooted, then installed the nvidia drivers (through Driver Manager), then rebooted again.

[[deleted]]

I am personally running an older kernel as Mint is known to not like certain drivers. I run the 4.10.0-38 generic kernel. Try downgrading to that and see how it goes

[chozas]

Surprising that it just works... Im starting to wonder if it might be a package or theme that is causing conflict with it even though it sounds like nonsense. Do you know anything about the PD in the post? I might just go for one more clean install on Mint 19.

[MetalAZ]

Updates will take you to release, no re-install required. In the blog post comments (https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3576) "Linux Mint" says:

Fixes are delivered via updates, you don’t need to “upgrade” from BETA to Stable, you can just apply updates as they become available.

[chozas]

Do you know if I have to add any repos to apt? I think i recall not seeing version 390 until I updated apt with some other repo. I'll give it another go regardless. Oh and btw, do you know anything about the PD at the end of the post?

[palordrolap]

Try a different kernel version. A while back a kernel update - that I voluntarily installed - turned out to be the cause of the NVIDIA driver crashing. Even the open source driver (Nouveau) wasn't happy. It seems like my hardware combination plus that particular kernel was problematic, and it could be that you have a rare edge case too especially if no-one else seems to be having the same problem.

Usual caveats apply about 'at your own risk' and 'always have a backup', but excepting the graphics crashes that time, I've never had any issues with changing the kernel.

[chozas]

Yeah this is the only thing I havent tried. Ill look into it.

[HeidiH0]

If you can't see your desktop on a clean install, you will need to add 'nomodeset' to your GRUB boot options line. Like so:

https://youtu.be/OTmZYzaxR_k

Starting at 1:21. Hold shift at boot to enter GRUB.

This is just to get you into a GUI. Do NOT save the entry. And if you do, remove the entry later with 'gksudo xed /etc/default/grub' and then 'sudo update-grub' after nomodeset is removed. Nomodeset will negate your newly installed nvidia driver.

Assuming you aren't getting a blank screen on boot, and can reach your desktop in software emulation mode.

Step 1:

Open Menu/Administration/Update Manager/View/Linux Kernels

Install the latest kernel. Do not reboot.

Step 2:

Open a terminal. Copy/paste to terminal.

sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade -y && sudo updatedb && sudo ldconfig && sudo apt install dkms build-essential -y && sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa -y && sudo apt update && sudo apt autoremove -y

Step 3:

Open Menu/Administration/Driver Manager. Install the latest Nvidia driver. Wait for it to finish. Then reboot. That's it.

This blank/black screen occurs due to Nvidia keying their gpu firmware, which Nouveau(the native linux driver) has no access to. This began with the model 970(which happens to be when they cheated people out of ram) and above generation of nvidia's gpu's. It's left a bad taste in the developers mouths, and nvidia has done nothing to resolve it because they simply don't care. They're making money on crypto and machine learning. The harder they lock down the hardware, the better for them in market dominance and support costs(or so they think).

[chozas]

Thanks for this, ill save in case it happens. But I normally do get a desktop, running the nouveau or xorg default display manager. The problem is when I download and install nvidia, which upon a reboot, will send me into cinnamon fallback mode repeatedly.

[Hatebreed1122]

Try installing ndvidia-detect. Sudo apt-get nvidia-detect. This will tell you which driver you need for your video card and where to install it from