Kubuntu 16.04 video driver question

[TWPonKubuntu]

I've installed 16.04, 32bit, many times in the past months.

Up until today, the video driver was defaulting to Nouveau which DID allow me to select the screen resolution.

Again up until today, I had serious problems with screen tearing, RAM usage slowly climbing and blinking launch bar background. All this is gone with the newest install.

I installed the ISO for 16.04.1, freshly downloaded and checked, burned as LiveUSB using mkusb, all good.

This is installed on a Dell Latitude D820, dual processor, 4GB RAM, 80GB Harddrive, formated with two partitions, root (/) and home (/home) plus swap.

The problem(s) are:

1) Cannot identify the video driver installed, at least using any of the GUI tools. If someone can suggest the CLI instruction to list video drivers, I would be very appreciative.

2) The installed video driver does NOT offer any screen resolution choices, it is set for 1280x1024 and this is way too small for my eyes.

The GOOD thing is:

My screen no longer tears, RAM usage is now stable (not escalating anymore), and I can use the system.

If anyone can offer advice on finding which video driver is installed, please reply.

[Snowhog]

See "Driver management software" in System Settings can't see any hardware (post #10)

[TWPonKubuntu]

Hmmmm...

I rebuilt the Xapian index, per the link from Snowhog.

sudo apt-get install apt-xapian-index
sudo update-apt-xapian-index

The driver manager GUI still does NOT work after this.

Then I did the ubuntu-driver install

sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

This changed my screen resolution to something even higher (1920x1200, even harder to read)but also resulted in my RAM usage beginning to escalate, which it did not before this step.

The System Settings display configuration GUI does NOT give options for any other resolution choices...

I still cannot get the Driver Manager GUI to work (it is still "broken" as per the comments in the linked thread),

Overall, not a significant improvement from before... Different, but not better.

Still no clue as to which video driver is running.

[claydoh]

I'll assume that you have an Nvidia gpu over the Intel on on your model as there would not be any non-free drivers for Intel. You'll have an Nvidia settings program - just type or search for nv and it should show up. In there you can see the driver version in use,



or:

cat /proc/driver/nvidia/version

For example mhere is mine:

jake@jake-Latitude-E6420:~$ cat /proc/driver/nvidia/version
NVRM version: NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module 361.42 Tue Mar 22 18:10:58 PDT 2016
GCC version: gcc version 5.4.0 20160609 (Ubuntu 5.4.0-6ubuntu1~16.04.1)

[oshunluvr]

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log |grep Driver

[TWPonKubuntu]

Claydoh, That was what I wanted, thanks.
I have adjusted my resolution to something I can actually read without ramming my nose through the screen.

THANKS!

I think my problem is solved, using the Nvidia update driver.

Let me run this for a while and if nothing else comes up, I'll mark this thread solved.
Snowhog and Oshunluvr, thank you both.

[TWPonKubuntu]

Curiouser and curiouser...

It seems that not all apps read the screen resolution from the same setting.

Per my previous posts, I was able to use the NVidia setting app to adjust resolution to 1024x768.

I did reboot.

Firefox displays at 1920x1200
Thunderbird displays at 1024x768
Plasma displays at 1024x768

Not ideal, but usable. Still, I wish I could get the System Settings Display Configuration to recognize the NVidia resolution setting... (1920x1200 is the only choice offered in System Settings)

[oshunluvr]

Honestly, if you're using anything other than a CRT, it's a down grade in performance and clarity to run at any resolution other than native. IMO, you'd have a better experience and a better picture if you set it at native and adjust the screen to a larger size: System Settings → Display and Monitor → Display Configuration → Scale Display, drag the slider to 2, log out and back in for all applications to take the new setting into account. You can set fonts to a larger size too.

Also, check your DPI - if it's wonky it can really cause all kinds of font issues.

Reset it at 1920x1200 then run this command in a konsole window

xdpyinfo |grep resolution

If you see a number that's not square or is wildly out of normal range (90-130), fixing that might help. You could also play with the DPI setting to get it more to your liking - make it smaller.

Firefox has it's own DPI settings. Type about:config in the browser’s address bar and hit Enter. In the search bar type layout.css.devPixelsPerPx . Then change that to 2 and save. (After you change back to normal resolution!). This will double the size of webpage fonts.

[TWPonKubuntu]

oshunluvr. I'll give it a try. Performance is less of concern than adjusting to my eyesight.

[oshunluvr]

oshunluvr. I'll give it a try. Performance is less of concern than adjusting to my eyesight.

Yeah, I sort figured that. But that partly why it's better to be a native resolution on an LCD/LED screen. They simply get blurrier at any other resolution. I mean, you're already looking at a somewhat blurry screen. No point in making that worse :-)

Let us know how it goes.