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I have been struggling to install Ubuntu 18.04 alongside my Windows 10, for a really long time. I recently bought Dell Vostro 3500, which comes with Windows 10 Pro. It has an Nvidia MX330 graphics card. I have been facing multiple issues trying to install Ubuntu 18.04 on the system.

I have installed Ubuntu 16-20 multiple times on my old systems and do know my way around the installation quite well, as I primarily use Ubuntu as my main OS. I installed Ubuntu 20.04 on this machine and that works fine, I had no trouble. However it just refuses to install 18.04, and I need to install Ubuntu 18.04 for my needs. I suspect it has got something to do with installing Nvidia graphics drivers, however, once I am done with my installation, it stops at the blank screen saying 'clean ..., files ... blocks'. I have tried multiple solutions such as purging and reinstalling nvidia-drivers, setting nomodeset, and reinstalling xserver, disabling Wayland, and multiple other solutions. solution, another solutoin etc.

I am able to somehow install remove nvidia, install the default graphics xservers, and I can get it to work, however once I install my Nvidia drivers and restart my system, I'm back to square one. I do need NVidia graphics card support for my applications. I've tried multiple drivers from 350 to 470 and that does not help as well.

I'd like to reiterate that I was able to get Ubuntu 20.04 working with NVidia support without any issues. However, Ubuntu 18.04 (I tried 18.04.1 to 18.04.6), and none of them seem to work.

I'm not sure what the error is and would need some help.

More details about my machine (that I think may be relevant): Model : Dell Vostro 3500 Graphics card : Nvidia MX330 2GB TPM 2.0

The machine is no longer available in the US, so here is the model from another country, but same specs : enter link description here

OlorinIstari
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    "I'd like to reiterate that I was able to get Ubuntu 20.04 working with NVidia support without any issues." - Easiest solution: Use 20.04! Maybe you should ask about the thing that makes you think you have to use an older release. You can't use 18.04 forever so it might be worth exploring what you need to do to be able to use a newer release that supports your hardware. – Nmath Dec 05 '21 at 05:30
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    I need to install Ubuntu 18.04 for my needs -- Why? This may be a XY problem. In general, you will need a relatively recent version of Ubuntu on a relatively new hardware. – Archisman Panigrahi Dec 05 '21 at 05:57
  • I need to use ros-melodic, a robotics package, which supports only Ubuntu 18.04. Since most of the code of my organization runs on ros-melodic, I need to stay on that too – OlorinIstari Dec 05 '21 at 06:28
  • In that case, use 20.04, and run a lightweight flavor like Xubuntu 18.04 in a VM. And use ros-melodic inside the VM. – Archisman Panigrahi Dec 05 '21 at 06:56
  • For the intense simulation and robotics work we do, a VM doesn't cut it sometimes, native support is highly desirable. I'd like to know why Ubuntu 18,04 install does not work, since it does seem like a fairly big deal given that its still within LTS – OlorinIstari Dec 05 '21 at 07:03
  • My understanding of ROS is that their versioning is based on Ubuntu. So you just need to use a different version or ROS for a different version of Ubuntu. Presumably new versions don't lose functionality that existed in previous versions. You said you have new hardware and 18.04 has an older GE kernel than 20.04. Have you tried the HWE kernel, which is designed to support newer hardware on LTS releases? – Nmath Dec 06 '21 at 09:33

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