[SOLVED] First Failure Ever

[jglen490]

Well, probably not ...

Anyway, the first reboot after accepting a kernel upgrade in the 5.3 series., I got the black screen of fail. I'm using Nvidia 390.116, which is recommended for the cheapo (Geforce GT730) video card I bought some time ago. The graphical presentation has been good, until that moment, and my graphical needs are very simple. But I do appreciate a good, clean UI.

I'm guessing I should try to go as far as I can with Nvidia versions, before going back to a 5.3 kernel, but I'm not sure about that. I may need to up my game with both a newer card and a newer Nvidia, or even Radeon. A snapshot of my system and graphics is below. Any advice?

john@john-Desktop:/usr$ inxi -SG
System:    Host: john-Desktop Kernel: 5.0.0-37-generic x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.12.9
       Distro: Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS
Graphics:  Card-1: Intel HD Graphics 530
       Card-2: NVIDIA GF108 [GeForce GT 730]
       Display Server: x11 (X.Org 1.20.5 ) drivers: modesetting,nvidia (unloaded: fbdev,vesa,nouveau)
       Resolution: 1600x900@60.00hz
       OpenGL: renderer: GeForce GT 730/PCIe/SSE2 version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 390.116

[Snowhog]

Do you have the package dkms installed? If not, do so.

[jglen490]

I do!

john@john-Desktop:/usr$ dpkg -l dkms*
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                    Version          Architecture     Description
+++-=======================-================-================-====================================================
ii  dkms                    2.3-3ubuntu9.7   all              Dynamic Kernel Module Support Framework

[jglen490]

Looks like kernel 5.3.0-26 is tops in 18.04 LTS for Nvidia drivers. When 5.3.0-37 was installed recently the result was the black screen of fail. The Geforce GT 730 is supposedly supported in higher versions of the Nvidia driver, but the kernel and Kubuntu release with the driver all have to be in sync for that to work. Looking forward to 20.04LTS!