NVIDIA - sure wish I rememberd what had been installed

[urdrwho5]

I did post this problem last week but I still have not found an answer. My laptop is an old HP with a Nvidia Go 4 card but for years it had been humming a long with good speed, good graphics and NVIDIA drivers were installed. I know for a fact that the NVIDIA X Server Settings app showed a lot more options than what has installed. I know for a fact that I also had NVIDIA sound drivers installed. The recent crash or change to Nouveau changed everything and I never told it to change to Nouveau.

I installed the drivers from PPA xorg-edgers but what I now are fonts and icons that do not look like they are 1024X768. Their size is fairly close but the look is closer to recovery mode fonts / icons. Plus now when I re-boot I get the Kubuntu 14.04 screen with the dots under it and some text now and then.

I can boot into XP and everything looks fine there. Oh I do hate when Linux breaks.

I can say that of all my computers ...and I say this sadly...... Linux breaks a lot more often than windows. I keep waving the flag for linux to make it to prime time but I've been waving that flag for a long time. I'm starting to think it is not going to happen in my lifetime. Windows is probably more idiot proofed than Linux and linux allows us to somehow cause it to break.

[GreyGeek]

I took a look at your previous post about not being able to get your NV17M GPU to work. That chip was introduced 15 YEARS ago! That is FIVE computer generations ago! Just a guess but I suspect that your computer is at least 3 generations old, if not older. NVIDIA moved on from it around 2005. It is unrealistic, to say nothing of impossible, to expect distro developers to include in their 1GB ISO files or their repositories, drivers that would work with 10-15 year old peripherals. When new hardware comes out the oldest hardware drivers are dropped to make way for the new ones.

You said XP works fine. As it should. It was on your computer when you bought it.

My suggestion would be to do something similar: pick up the CD or USB that held the last version of Linux that worked for you and install it, probably from the XP period, and lock the GPU down (in the package manager) so that it is not updated. You probably will want to lock the kernel as well. Make sure you are running a good firewall and do not visit pron sites or download packages that are not in the repository.

[urdrwho5]

Ok....I know it is old BUT (big letters) it was working very, Very, Very satisfactory until last week. It was in @ Feb 2015 that I installed 14.04 LTS and that was working fine. I'm not trying to get a lecture on how old that laptop is...I am trying to find out why it all went south. And if I remember it was all working with a NVIDIA driver that was in the three hundred range...not the 96 one.

I would like to know the package that installed the NVIDIA drivers and the NVIDIA sound drivers. It was a long time ago.

I don't visit dangerous places, I've never had a virus on any of my 4 computers and I do run a firewall.

Came back in to say that I didn't mean to sound harsh --- it is just very frustrating to me when something was working well, when I did nothing to the OS and then something in the OS goes wrong. I know it worked and it can work again...I just need to figure it out.

I took a look at your previous post about not being able to get your NV17M GPU to work. That chip was introduced 15 YEARS ago! That is FIVE computer generations ago! Just a guess but I suspect that your computer is at least 3 generations old, if not older. NVIDIA moved on from it around 2005. It is unrealistic, to say nothing of impossible, to expect distro developers to include in their 1GB ISO files or their repositories, drivers that would work with 10-15 year old peripherals. When new hardware comes out the oldest hardware drivers are dropped to make way for the new ones.

You said XP works fine. As it should. It was on your computer when you bought it.

My suggestion would be to do something similar: pick up the CD or USB that held the last version of Linux that worked for you and install it, probably from the XP period, and lock the GPU down (in the package manager) so that it is not updated. You probably will want to lock the kernel as well. Make sure you are running a good firewall and do not visit pron sites or download packages that are not in the repository.

[GreyGeek]

Ok....I know it is old BUT (big letters) it was working very, Very, Very satisfactory until last week. It was in @ Feb 2015 that I installed 14.04 LTS and that was working fine. I'm not trying to get a lecture on how old that laptop is...I am trying to find out why it all went south. And if I remember it was all working with a NVIDIA driver that was in the three hundred range...not the 96 one.

I would like to know the package that installed the NVIDIA drivers and the NVIDIA sound drivers. It was a long time ago.

I don't visit dangerous places, I've never had a virus on any of my 4 computers and I do run a firewall.

Came back in to say that I didn't mean to sound harsh --- it is just very frustrating to me when something was working well, when I did nothing to the OS and then something in the OS goes wrong. I know it worked and it can work again...I just need to figure it out.

And I am not criticizing you. It's just that what you are asking of the latest release of Kubuntu, or any other KDE/Plasma5 distro, is probably not possible, i.e., run satisfactorily on your very old machine by doing nothing but installing just released binaries. And, mixing old binaries (and their required libraries) may and probably will conflict with current binaries and their libraries. It's good that your machine worked well with 14.04 LTS. It is my recommendation that you reinstall that 14.04 LTS (which will be supported until April 2019) and lock your GPU version to the one that worked, AND, the kernel that worked with it. Let everything else update. If an update breaks something using muon to revert to the previous binary which worked.

The alternative is to move to a distro like Linux From Scratch, where you edit a kernel config (that includes support for your hardware) and compile the source of every package that you install. Or, perhaps, try Gentoo or Arch. Other than that perhaps Puppy or some other lightweight distro designed to work on older hardware might be useful.

[urdrwho5]

OK, now I get what you are saying.

I just was hoping I wouldn't have to do a re-install. I wish I could just reinstall over what is there now.

I don't know how he is doing it but my computer science going to college son is running version 16 on the same exact computer. He only has about 10 computers up there. But he told me it is running fine.

The problem I always, always have is the GPU with NVIDIA. Other than that ....things went well.

Many years ago before deciding on Kbuntu I was going to install Lbuntu. Even though I was going through the manual install/partition etc. for some reason the install went over my windows partition. It took a while using forensic third part stuff but I finally got 90% of the lost XP files back. Don't want to go through that again.

And I am not criticizing you. It's just that what you are asking of the latest release of Kubuntu, or any other KDE/Plasma5 distro, is probably not possible, i.e., run satisfactorily on your very old machine by doing nothing but installing just released binaries. And, mixing old binaries (and their required libraries) may and probably will conflict with current binaries and their libraries. It's good that your machine worked well with 14.04 LTS. It is my recommendation that you reinstall that 14.04 LTS (which will be supported until April 2019) and lock your GPU version to the one that worked, AND, the kernel that worked with it. Let everything else update. If an update breaks something using muon to revert to the previous binary which worked.

The alternative is to move to a distro like Linux From Scratch, where you edit a kernel config (that includes support for your hardware) and compile the source of every package that you install. Or, perhaps, try Gentoo or Arch. Other than that perhaps Puppy or some other lightweight distro designed to work on older hardware might be useful.

[urdrwho5]

I've installed some Nvidia drivers from a PPA, I've added some lines to Xorg to set the screen resolution, installed some new fonts and things are now at an acceptable level. How can I lock this down so nothing gets updated or changed? I also changed my display manager from LightDm to KDM....not sure if that made a bit of difference?

Now if I could find a way to un-bloat my home folder I could get back down to 65% disk space. I moved all docs and pics to an external driver, it didn't make any difference and I'm still at 74%.

And I am not criticizing you. It's just that what you are asking of the latest release of Kubuntu, or any other KDE/Plasma5 distro, is probably not possible, i.e., run satisfactorily on your very old machine by doing nothing but installing just released binaries. And, mixing old binaries (and their required libraries) may and probably will conflict with current binaries and their libraries. It's good that your machine worked well with 14.04 LTS. It is my recommendation that you reinstall that 14.04 LTS (which will be supported until April 2019) and lock your GPU version to the one that worked, AND, the kernel that worked with it. Let everything else update. If an update breaks something using muon to revert to the previous binary which worked.

The alternative is to move to a distro like Linux From Scratch, where you edit a kernel config (that includes support for your hardware) and compile the source of every package that you install. Or, perhaps, try Gentoo or Arch. Other than that perhaps Puppy or some other lightweight distro designed to work on older hardware might be useful.

[GreyGeek]

I use synaptic as my package manager. Under the "package" menu option is a sub-option called "Lock Version".
Muon also offers the ability to lock versions in its menu options, but I don't know about the new fancy versions with all the pretty pictures.

I can't help you about the difference between lightdm and KDM. I use sddm.

Unbloating your home folder won't be an automated process. You'll have to examine each file and determine what it is and what it is used for. Is it an executable binary (ELF)? Is it a graphic image? Textfile? Script? Config file?
Apt-cache has "depends" and "rdepends" parameters which show what depends on a file and what files depend on it. That would be very useful to make sure you do not delete a dependent file.

Your install overlapped the Windows partition because the beginning or ending boundary was accidentally mis-set.

[urdrwho5]

That windows event was years ago and a learning experience to watch while installing an OS to another partition.

Muon does have lock version and I guess I have to go through everything to lock down the packages. Thunderbird has been locked for a while and for sure I'm going to lock down the kernel.

I did start to hunt, pick remove that home folder but it isn't shrinking much.

I use synaptic as my package manager. Under the "package" menu option is a sub-option called "Lock Version".
Muon also offers the ability to lock versions in its menu options, but I don't know about the new fancy versions with all the pretty pictures.

I can't help you about the difference between lightdm and KDM. I use sddm.

Unbloating your home folder won't be an automated process. You'll have to examine each file and determine what it is and what it is used for. Is it an executable binary (ELF)? Is it a graphic image? Textfile? Script? Config file?
Apt-cache has "depends" and "rdepends" parameters which show what depends on a file and what files depend on it. That would be very useful to make sure you do not delete a dependent file.

Your install overlapped the Windows partition because the beginning or ending boundary was accidentally mis-set.

[GreyGeek]

It will. You can use Dolphin. Add the "size" column and sort by size. Add the "type" column to know what kind of file it is, and the permissions file to see if it is deletable. That way you can begin with the biggest first!

[GreyGeek]

My wife and I took our daughter and 15 year old grandson to sunday dinner to celebrate his getting his learner's permit to drive. Two years ago I gave him my Acer V3-771G 17" laptop with i7 CPU and NVIDIA GEFORCE GT 650M GPU and 16GB of RAM. I asked how it was working for him and he said "Donno, I haven't used it in months" I asked if I could have it back and last night I installed the latest Neon on it. Perfect fit.

This morning I played around with it and decided to see if I could get the integrated NVIDIA card working. After a little research I discovered that the most likely method would be to install the Ubuntu NVIDIA drivers PPA.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt update
and then
sudo apt install nvidia-prime nvidia-370
(except I used synaptic)
The last command pulled down a ton of apps and dev tools, but when it was all done I rebooted.
Before the reboot glxgears gave me 59 -60 fps.
After the reboot glxgears gives me 11,000+ fps.
Every app runs using NVIDIA. I don't detect any temperature problems.

I learned that the reason he hasn't used it was because his primary use was for playing Windows games, but Windows has gotten so corrupted and infested it wouldn't run well and kept crashing. After my Neon and NVIDIA experiments I decided that the Win7 partition will be history tomorrow. I am going to give NEON the ENTIRE 600GB of HD and then install NVIDIA again. This puppy is going to be my main machine.

I wasn't optimistic about getting NVIDIA to be usable because I had tried it on this machine when I first got it four years ago and Bumblebee and optimus wasn't very reliable. Now, NVIDIA is transparent, as if it were the primary system.
EDIT:
I forgot to mention that when synaptic was finished installing nvidia-prime and nvidia-370 there was no "Reboot" flag. I closed synaptic and tried to open a Konsole to run glxgears but it crashed, as did every other attempt to open any app. I used Alt-F2 to open Krunner and in it I entered sudo shutdown -r now, but it did not work either. Not knowing if there was a magic set of keys to switch from an obvious dysfunctional nouveau driver to nvidia-370 I was forced to hit the power button. When the desktop came up it was running nvidia-370.

This morning I reinstalled Neon in order to capture the 365GB of HD that Win7 was taking. The sequence of events of the first install were duplicated. The FPS of the new install was 10,500+ FPS.

[urdrwho5]

Thanks for that PPA -- I'll give it a try.

I found that my ./cache file in the home folder was very large. It had a lot of stuff left over from browsers that I no longer use and other such old info. I deleted the files and went from 74% disk used to 63% disk used. The cache will rebuild over time but a lot of the stuff won't rebuild because I don't use those programs anymore.

My wife has an old Acer that runs Kubuntu 15.04 and runs well. It doesn't have nvidia GPU stuff.

Wondering if I should purge the current Nvidia drivers before going with the Ubuntu PPA?

[GreyGeek]

Thanks for that PPA -- I'll give it a try.
...

Wondering if I should purge the current Nvidia drivers before going with the Ubuntu PPA?

YES! That step is always recommended when changing nvidia versions. The purge gets rid of the previous config files and allows new config files to replace them.

[GreyGeek]

When I plugged my HP P1606dn duplex laser printer into my new setup it was recognized immediately and configured, but with one exception, the duplex plugin allowing it to print on both sides of a page.
When I installed the HP GUI and fired it up from the system tray I clicked on the "Install plugin" option line on the front panel. Everything was working well until it came to the "root" password. Since Neon is a sudo system and I am the admin I entered my password, which was rejected because HP wan't the ROOT passward, which doesn't exist. I decided to install and use Kuser, but it is not available for Plasma5, so I will have to use the CLI

EDIT:
I downloaded the 3.16.3 plugin run file.
Catch-22!
When I sudo su root and enter my password I am given root. However, hplip does not like it!

:~/Downloads$ sudo su root
[sudo] password for jerry:
root@jerry-Aspire-V3-771:/home/jerry/Downloads# vdir
total 2036
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jerry jerry 2084271 Nov 1 11:02 hplip-3.16.3-plugin.run
root@jerry-Aspire-V3-771:/home/jerry/Downloads# sh ./hplip-3.16.3-plugin.run
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing HPLIP 3.16.3 Plugin Self Extracting Archive........................................... .....
Error importing HPLIP modules. Is HPLIP installed?
root@jerry-Aspire-V3-771:/home/jerry/Downloads#

[urdrwho5]

My Epson WiFi printer never gives me an option to print both sides when using Kubuntu. Sometimes it doesn't even want to print on one side.


Installed nvidia-prime nvidia-370 and everything looked fine except my fan would never stop running. I reverted back to 352 and no fan issue. I see that repository added some drivers in the 360's and I think I'll try upgrading a bit at a time. Maybe 370 is over clocking my GPU a bit.

When I plugged my HP P1606dn duplex laser printer into my new setup it was recognized immediately and configured, but with one exception, the duplex plugin allowing it to print on both sides of a page.
When I installed the HP GUI and fired it up from the system tray I clicked on the "Install plugin" option line on the front panel. Everything was working well until it came to the "root" password. Since Neon is a sudo system and I am the admin I entered my password, which was rejected because HP wan't the ROOT passward, which doesn't exist. I decided to install and use Kuser, but it is not available for Plasma5, so I will have to use the CLI

EDIT:
I downloaded the 3.16.3 plugin run file.
Catch-22!
When I sudo su root and enter my password I am given root. However, hplip does not like it!

[wizard10000]

...I found that my ./cache file in the home folder was very large. It had a lot of stuff left over from browsers that I no longer use and other such old info. I deleted the files and went from 74% disk used to 63% disk used. The cache will rebuild over time but a lot of the stuff won't rebuild because I don't use those programs anymore.

Don't know if you're interested, but 'ncdu' is an ncurses-based disk usage analyzer that will allow you to drill down without changing dolphin views - although there's not a thing wrong with changing dolphin views Just another tool to have in the toolbox.

ncdu and glances are two command-line tools that I recommend to everyone