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I recently did sudo apt upgrade and I think this upgraded my kernel to 5.13.0-27-generic. (I think I also ran sudo apt autoremove.) Since then my graphics have been worse, e.g. windows 'split' when dragging them across the screen, or when scrolling through text, and the cursor is slow to catch up if I have fractional scaling enabled.

I went to check settings in the Nvidia GUI which I'd used previously (I had it set to "High performance mode" or something like that before), but it doesn't come up in Activities. In Software & Updates it is still there with "Continue using a manually installed driver" selected, which I think is the same as before, though underneath it says "No proprietary drivers are in use".

If I run lsmod I don't see anything with Nvidia in the name, but I'm not sure that's relevant; I just read it on another post.

In Synaptic there are hundreds of entries for Nvidia, including ones described as "Linux kernel nvidia modules for version 5.13.0-27".

So where is the GUI and why have the graphics got worse?

Specs: Dell XPS 15 (9510), i7-11800, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050-Ti

Judderman88
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  • That happens when you install the NVIDIA drivers from NVIDIA themselves instead of using the Ubuntu NVIDIA drivers that you can get from Additional Drivers in the Settings. NVIDIA drivers from NVIDIA lack the DKMS settings to carry over into new Kernel updates. – Terrance Jan 20 '22 at 18:37
  • Thanks @Terrance. They were originally automatically installed when I installed Ubuntu; I didn't install any graphics drivers separately after that, as far as I recall. Anyway, how do I (re-)install the ones from Ubuntu? Under Additional Drivers everything but "Continue using manually installed driver" is greyed out. – Judderman88 Jan 20 '22 at 19:20
  • I have never tried it before, but if there is something in the /usr/src/ folder for the NVIDIA drivers that are installed, you could possibly create a dkms.conf file and turn the driver into a DKMS version. You will also have to make sure that dkms is installed. sudo apt install dkms It is the Dynamic Kernel Module Support application. You can always check the status by running dkms status and it will show you the non-kernel drivers installed that are using dkms – Terrance Jan 20 '22 at 19:43
  • If the /usr/src/ NVIDIA folder does exist, you could follow these https://askubuntu.com/questions/1333542/realtek-r8168-driver-compile-errors-on-kernel-5-8-0-50-on-20-04-1-lts/1334101#1334101 instructions that are for a RealTek NIC, but the setup would be the same. – Terrance Jan 20 '22 at 19:43
  • If that folder does not exist, then you would have to remove the installed NVIDIA drivers and then install the ones from the Ubuntu repos by running sudo apt install nvidia-driver-495 – Terrance Jan 20 '22 at 19:44
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    Thanks. I removed it (it was the 460 not 495) and installed the 495, and all seems to be well after rebooting. – Judderman88 Jan 21 '22 at 17:50

2 Answers2

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This was answered in the following comment by @Terrance:

Remove the installed NVIDIA drivers and then install the ones from the Ubuntu repos by running sudo apt install nvidia-driver-495.

Nmath
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Judderman88
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Be sure to have all the necessary kernel headers installed and updated. Otherwise the NVIDIA driver might not be able to create/install the necessary kernel modules.

Especially if you might have installed more than one kernel flavor (generic/lowlatency).

apt-get install linux-headers-generic 
apt-get install linux-headers-lowlatency

If you install just one of them, you might land in hell, once you try to boot the wrong kernel flavor - as I did.

Using these in favor of specific versions that are usually recommended in this case (apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname –r)) has the advantage, that you have to do it just ONCE. Every kernel update thereafter automatically draws the specific headers with it and you should be back to "it just simply works".

Robert Orso
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