Update Removed Preferred NVidia 535 Driver

Support and Help
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1

Ubuntu Version:
24.04.4 LTS

Desktop Environment (if applicable):
GNOME, I believe

Problem Description:
As of yesterday, my computer had solid graphical performance (for a device of its hardware). As of today, subsequent to an update, performance has dropped significantly when the device is running from battery.

(Note: Performance on battery is always a little worse on this system–but now it’s far worse, with horrible jittering in both games and non-game applications.)

Now, I’ve had trouble like this before, the issue having been that Ubuntu took it upon itself to change which NVidia graphics driver I was using. (?!) In that case the solution was to switch over to the “535” driver, which was still available at the time.

[edit]

Just to note: Checking my log-file, I see indeed a record of the update removing the “535” driver.

[/edit]

But now, the “535” driver is gone, too, leaving me a little stuck. :/

(Specifically, the update seems to have forced me over to the “580” driver–which, as stated in the above-linked thread, simply doesn’t seem to work well on my specific hardware.)

Relevant System Information:
Computer: Dell Inspiron 15 3000 Series
CPU: Core i7 2.4GHz (4-core)
Memory: 8GB
Graphics: GeForce 840M, 2GB (+Intel integrated)
Firmware version: A06
OS Type: 64-bit
Gnome Version: 46
Windowing System: X11
Kernel Version: Linux 6.14.0-37-generic

What I’ve Tried:
I’ve tried adding PPAs, “holding” the “535” driver, apt-installing the “535” driver, and even downloading the “535“ driver directly from NVidia.

That last option seemed promising–but it seems like it’ll only install if neither an NVidia driver nor the Nouveau driver are present, and advises that I set up a file to prevent the latter from taking hold… which is a bit of a scary prospect. o_o

So far, I’ve had no luck in restoring my “535” driver. :/

[edit 2]

I’ve now also tried an alternative driver, that being the “565” driver. The result seems to be greater consistency between battery and mains power, but not great performance overall. At the least it serves as a stand-in until a better driver can be installed…

[/edit 2]

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Here is where your problems start. Either the original 6.8.x GA kernel or the HWE 7.0.x. Your kernel is unsupported because your system hasn’t been correctly kept up-to-date.

Ditto for the Nvidia drivers that you had and wanted to installed while, very likely, making an even worse mess.

Nvidia says you should be running with the much newer 580.xxx branch. The driver is available in the Ubuntu repository and should have been automatically updated if you Ubuntu up-to-date as you should.

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That was not Ubuntus doing but Nvidias, their LTS drivers are only supported for 3y, the 535 driver was released in June 2023 and it’s support period was ended by Nvidia on June 1st this year

What Ubuntu did here is to try to still leave you with the best option (switching you to 580) that is security supported by Nvidia…

Ubuntu is an enterprise distribution and must fulfill certain standards to keep certain certifications so it can not let completely unsupported drivers bit-rot in the archive…

3 Likes
4

That’s fair!

Conversely–and maybe I should start a thread for this; I’ve thought about it a few times–it seems that every time there’s a kernel update it breaks both my graphics drivers and (somehow) my internet connection.

Which makes it hard to then run the updates that might fix those breakages. :/

So for a while now I’ve just been contenting myself with sticking to a kernel and graphics driver that consistently works.

(Indeed, I was under the impression from the thread linked in my first post that it was valid to stick to an older kernel.)

Oh, it was installed by the update.

But, as per the thread to which I linked, it doesn’t seem to work well on my machine.

So, regardless of what NVidia declares, it doesn’t seem to be a viable choice for me.

Note that I didn’t open this thread because I checked, noticed that a favourite driver was uninstalled, and wanted it back because of favouritism. I started this thread because I noticed that performance was oddly poor, checked, and found that a driver that had previously caused trouble for me had been installed, and the one that had worked was no longer available.

Hmmm… I understand that position, but would it not be preferable to let me decide whether or not to keep using the older driver?

After all, there wouldn’t have been a problem if Ubuntu hadn’t decided to uninstall the driver that I already had installed and working.

If that had conflicted with the rest of the update, then I would have liked the option to indicate that the update not be installed.

An up-to-date system is all well and good, but of reduced usefulness if so updating it causes it to function more poorly than before.

5

I’m in a very similar situation, having been very satisfied with the 535 driver for many months or years now. I do differ in that my GPU is a 2 GB GeForce GTX 750 and I am on the 6.8.0-136-lowlatency kernel. And I’m on an old Lenovo desktop that doesn’t have the integrated Intel graphics option.

Discover will install the 580 driver the next time I allow it to update. I am quite concerned about this because when the 580 was briefly the recommended driver - that happened a couple months ago - I had problems with sleep/resume behaviors.

At the moment I’m manually selecting the packages I allow to update. I’m contemplating holding off any NVidia-related updates until Ubuntu Studio 26.04.1 comes out later this month. Really not sure if that’s the right approach.

1 Like
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Bumping, as I still don’t have a solution.

(Noting that, while it’s not a major issue right now–I’m currently not doing any performance testing, nor playing anything on the PC–having my computer’s performance be permanently tanked is… not a good outcome for me.)

To be clear: My main goal is to get the computer running as well as it previously was. If this is via another driver, then well and good; if it’s via reinstalling the “535” driver, then likewise well and good. Historically, the “580” driver hasn’t worked on my system–but if someone knows how to coerce it into working well, then that’s acceptable to me!

That said, I do fear that migrating to a later kernel would be a whole issue in itself. I may create a thread in which to address that at a later stage, but I would prefer to avoid it for current purposes.

So… Any thoughts…?

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Wait, though, wouldn’t it be an earlier kernel? Sorry if it’s a redundant question. On my 24.04.4 LTS system, Discover is showing the update to all the Nvidia stuff (driver, libraries, etc) but the only pending update regarding the kernel seems to be linux-tools-common which wants to update to 6.8.0-137.137. (For info I’m on the 6.8.0-136-lowlatency kernel.)

Also, question, is sleep/resume behaving properly on your system with the 580 driver? Specifically asking whether the screen is dark and computer is unresponsive on resume.

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If there’s something that calls for clarification, then the question isn’t redundant, I feel. :slight_smile:

To answer: I was referring to a point made by "celticwarrior”, above, in which they noted that I was not on the most recent kernel, and indicated that this was a cause of my troubles.

(Specifically, I’m on 6.14.0-37, while I think that there’s at least a 6.17 kernel available.)

But as I’ve had trouble with kernel updates (and have indeed tried one of the 6.17 kernels and found the same to be true there), I’ve been resistant to the idea of switching from my 6.14 kernel to a more-recent one.

Migrating to an earlier kernel might be an idea… But there is that suggestion above that being on an older kernel might already be an issue. Unless there’s an earlier kernel with better support than my current, I would imagine that migrating backwards would be counterproductive…

I’ll be honest, I don’t really use the “sleep/resume” functionality of my laptop: generally speaking, I have the computer either on, or off.

However, there is one exception: every so often the battery runs down while I’m away, and the computer hibernates.

In these instances, “waking” the computer generally doesn’t work for me–and I don’t think that it’s worked reliably in at least a long while, and likely over multiple graphics drivers.

Instead, it ends up showing a long listing of errors, which I don’t recall offhand. (But might recognise if someone had them to show.)

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To be clear: https://askubuntu.com/a/1546835/1210606

In LTS releases you always have two kernel options. The problem I pointed out is that you are deliberately NOT using any of them. Again, for Ubuntu 24.04 either the original branch - 6.8 - that is also a long term supported kernel, or HWE (Hardware Enablement) that is/are newer versions from newer releases backported and currently 7.0. This are your options. 6.14 or 6.17 are NOT, period.

If you are using HWE you can at any time install the other one: sudo apt install --install-recommends linux-generic

Conversely, if you installed the General Availability (GA) one - usually only the first ISO released does that, 24.04.1 will carry HWE - but want to have the newer version (support for newer hardware, other improvements, etc.) you can also do that: sudo apt install linux-generic-hwe-24.04

End of story.

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Aah, interesting! That wasn’t clear from your original post–although in light of this post I see now that you were saying much the same thing there!

(I thought that you were saying that I should upgrade to the latest kernel!)

To be clear, let me say: I wasn’t on the 6.14 kernel out of any particular interest in that kernel.

But from time to time the updater included an update to the kernel, to which the computer would then boot by default.

When this happened with the most recent kernel that it installed, as mentioned previously the update proved problematic, and so I’ve been manually falling back on the 6.14 kernel.

And before your post here I would likely have worried that falling back to a kernel even earlier would mean losing support or compatibility; this may be why I didn’t fall back further.

I’m not familiar with the “Hardware Enablement” line, but from what you say I’m guessing that it’s not something that I require. I certainly don’t have any particularly recent hardware! XD;

But it sounds like I should drop down to the 6.8 kernel! (Which I do think that I’ve seen in my GRUB menu, so it shouldn’t be hard to try it out and report back. I’ll likely do that later tonight, then!)

[edit]

Update: Okay, I just tried dropping down to kernel 6.8, and… That seems to be one of the kernels that doesn’t work for me. :/

So, perhaps the first thing might be to figure out how to fix that. I’ll start a new topic, I think, since that’s not strictly the same thing as this, and if called for return here once that topic has (hopefully) been resolved…

[edit 2]

Said new topic has been created:

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Which PPA(s) have you tried? Because I have one specifically for this issue:

1 Like
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Ah! It looks like I didn’t try that one!

Now, that one does return the 535 driver to my listing in the “additional drivers” screen–but for some reason the installation of it from there fails.

Is there a log-file that I could look at to see why it’s failing…?

Specifically, I’m presented with a small dialogue-box containing only a large “X”-symbol (no text), and an “Okay”-button. Pressing the button seems to leave me back on the 580 driver. :/

[edit]

Oh, it occurs to me that I should note that I attempted installation under the 6.14 kernel; I can try under the 7.0 kernel later, I imagine.

[/edit]

To answer your question, looking back at my browser history, it seems like I tried these:

In other news, an update for the 580 driver seems to have come in today. I installed it, rebooted, and tested performance–but no improvement seems to have come of it.

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Don’t use the additional driver dialog. It will try to install signed modules that don’t exist for 535 anymore. You need to use the -dkms package and not signed modules.
Make sure you set up an MOK or disable SecureBoot before installing the -dkms package.
Set the additional driver dialog to use the nouveau driver, purge out any remaining 580 packages, and then install 535.

sudo apt purge *580* && sudo apt autopurge
sudo apt install nvidia-driver-535 nvidia-dkms-535
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Hmm… Doing a little reading, it looks like disabling SecureBoot will incur a bit of extra risk.

However… Right now it looks like that or I give up on my system providing decent performance again, and I’m not convinced that the risk looks high enough to outweigh that.

So fair enough! I’ll try that a little later and report back then, I intend–and thank you for the guidance! :slight_smile:

[edit]

Aha! The 535 driver is installed, and I finally have proper performance again! :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

Now, I’ll note that I did have to go back into the NVidia settings tool to re-do my settings there. And as I’m not sure of when last I checked them, it’s possible that those settings were all that was wrong, and that the 580 driver might have worked.

Still, I have a system that works as expected now, so I don’t intend to experiment with it overmuch!

But even so, let that be a note for any who may follow after me: Check your NVidia settings tool after changes to your drivers!

Anyway, thank you so much, dtl131! You really helped me here! :smiley:

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