[SOLVED] X-org or Nvidia recommended driver?

[oldgeek]

There is currently another thread discussing Nvidia but I have another question and don't want to mix things up or distract from the other thread so I started a new one. I have been using the Nouveau driver for my video card, which is Nvidia GF108 (Ge Force GT 630), but when I recently looked at the drivers list in System Settings I noted that the recommended driver is actually a metapackage 390 from Nvidia, so I installed that and qam currently using that as my driver. However, I have been reading a lot of things about trouble with Nvidia drivers so I wonder if I made the right choice. I don't have tearing, and in fact the only difference I can see is that the Kubuntu logo is bigger when I turn the machine on. Maybe it's a little slower, too, but I'm not sure. Should I continue using the recommended driver or go back to Nouveau? What is the difference?

[claydoh]

The proprietary driver has better performance for video, gaming, multiple monitors etc. Technically they are better than the free open driver.

Use what is best for you.

I personally have seldom had issues with Nvidia drivers over the past few years, other than when I experiment with them or use beta drivers. They often seem to require a tweak or two, but you only hear about the problems and never successes.
Plasma seems to have a hate hate relationship with then them, if you read all the complaints.

I use my 1050 to run a 4k tv and was surprised at how well the nouveau worked ootb for general desktop use, but it could not handle 4k video, or any gaming at all.

Sent from my LG-H931 using Tapatalk

[kc1di]

I've use Nvidia drivers for a long time and in almost every situation they perform better than the open source driver. Nouveau is a good driver for ordinary things. But nvidia drivers on linux are better IMHO.
I think you made the right choice.

[Rod J]

I have an ancient HP Compaq DC7600 SFF desktop PC someone gave to me a while back.

I was wondering what to do with it and decided to see if I could run Kodi on it attached to my TV. I installed Xubuntu 14.04 on it but the performance with Kodi playing videos was pretty pathetic (OK, it only has a Pentium 4 HT ~3Ghz so I wasn't expecting much) . I upgraded the PC with a modest Nvidia graphic card (NVS300 - GT218 GPU) which improved things quite a bit using the Nouveau driver, but I could not get rid of "wow and flutter" audio in Kodi (very noticeable in background music). Videos did play better via SMplayer or VLC though.

Anyway, one day I thought I would try the Nvidia driver instead and it made a very significant difference in video playback, so much so that viewing videos (MP4) in Kodi is very acceptable (but it still won't play x265 HEVC vids well at all as I believe x265 requires more CPU performance).

So, I would say overall go with the Nvidia driver. I do have very minor issues with it (coming back from standby I have to move or click the mouse to get the screen to redraw itself) but I can live with that.

[oldgeek]

Thanks for all your advice. I'll stick with Nvidia driver until something goes wrong.

[Thomas00]

I used the Nouveau drivers when I started off with 18.04 but switched to Nvidia a couple of days ago when I read this thread.
Have to say that on my Dell Precision laptop the Nvidia driver are a lot worse, I have some white noise areas every now and then but worst is that the laptop gets really hot, fan is constantly on and it looks like the battery is draining substantially faster.
Long story short, back to Nouveau...and next time I order a laptop it's not going to be an NVida card again.

[Antifreeze]

Let me ask probably an obvious question to you guys, but one that has hankered me for a while now.

My Hardware is on the old side core2quad 2.66GHz. CPU with a Geforce 650 card, 4 GB system memory, 128gb SSD for / and 1 terabyte disk drive for /home.

Been using Linux distros for about 4 years now... a lot of different ones, but the same problem always popped up with Nvidia drivers no matter the distro.

Whenever a kernel update would come up or even an Nvidia update, or some odd update that breaks things, my system would become borked to a black screen. Trying to use older kernels did the trick most times. But today I decided to go with the "recommended" driver 390 I believe and I had no backup kernels to go to, nothing to go back to & I got borked. So I reinstalled the OS. Luckily for me, I keep my /home folder on a different drive, so it was a relatively painless process setting up everything.
My question is this: What are the steps involved if an Nvidia driver misbehaves to the point you can only get to the recovery mode screen by booting with the shift key? How would I reinstall the nouveau driver? Any actual commands would really be helpful. I'm using Kubuntu 18.04 and not changing it, I love this distro.
Thanks for reading

[claydoh]

WHat do you mean by a black screen? Did you make it to the login screen? Is there a mouse cursor? It simply could be that plasma crashed at startup. If you have a mouse pointer, try hitting alt-space to bring up Krunner and type in the command :

plasmashell

and see if that starts the desktop


You also do not have to go to the recovery console for most things. hit ctrl-alt-f2 to switch to a full screen virtual terminal (vt), you can log in and run commands there.
Some commands that may help:

sudo apt autoremove     ####removes unused package dependecies, sometimes nvidia driver package upgrades leave things behind (rare but it does happen)
sudo apt-get -f install  ###installs any missing packages - a general command tool to use
sudo dpkg --configure -a ### attempts to run any install scripts that did not run for some reason when installing packages or updates

[GreyGeek]

I put a "hold" on my nvidia driver and related applications so they are NOT updated. (If it's not broken I don't fix it). BEFORE I do an upgrade that involves a kernel I take a snapshot of @ and @home so that if something goes south I can roll back in less than 5 minutes. See the BTRFS subforum for full details