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I am trying to roll back my currently installed proprietary NVidia driver (v535) to an older version because I suspect the latest update causes problems with many Windows games played through Proton on Steam.

The driver manager in KDE does not seem to allow me to select another driver like I could in previous releases of Ubuntu Studio - the button to "Apply changes" is greyed out:

enter image description here

All the questions I find here either relate to installing the latest driver, repairing a broken install, or are simply outdated.

What is the correct procedure to follow to safely install an arbitrary Nvidia driver version on Ubuntu Studio 22.04?

Sebastian
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  • It makes zero scense to talk about installing an arbitrary package xxx safely. All packages allowed in the repositories are tested one way or another, so they can't be arbitrary. Installing an arbitrary package is inherently unsafe, and should be avoided. – mikewhatever Jul 15 '23 at 10:24
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    ubuntu-drivers list --gpgpu is the recommended method nowadays to view available. see its help on how to install. – Rinzwind Jul 15 '23 at 11:15
  • When I say "arbitrary" I mean any version available in the repositories, not only the latest one. As you see in the screenshot, multiple versions are available. All of these should be safe and tested. The obvious way to select them in the Driver Manager and reboot, which already does not work anymore apparently, is not. – Sebastian Jul 15 '23 at 13:30
  • @rinzwind Thank you. Does that mean doing it using ubuntu-drivers install, without reverting to nouveau, rebooting and re-installing another driver is safe today and won't mess up my system? Side question - why does ubuntu-drivers list --gpgpu not list the version I had installed (530) before the update to 535? – Sebastian Jul 15 '23 at 13:34
  • Best to always purge old driver before installing new one. Typically new driver does not uninstall old, may only overwrite part of it & then you get conflicts. Older instructions that added ppa, not now required, otherwise the same: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2383560&p=13735336#post13735336 – oldfred Jul 15 '23 at 15:17
  • Thank you @oldfred - this worked well. Would you mind posting it as an answer here? – Sebastian Jul 31 '23 at 08:34

1 Answers1

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Best to always purge old driver before installing new one. Typically new driver does not uninstall old, may only overwrite part of it & then you get conflicts. Always install nVidia drivers from Ubuntu repository. The nVidia .run file directly from nVidia is not updated to work easily with Ubuntu. You in effect have to reinstall with every kernel update with dkms. Repository has latest nVidia driver so no need to directly download it, anyway. And Ubuntu repository version is automatically updated into every new kernel.

You can see what is installed with these:

dpkg -l | grep -i nvidia
dkms status
lsmod | grep nvidia

This should show available versions, but best to install recommended.

ubuntu-drivers devices

If you just want default version - recommended one

sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

Or you can manually choose any in list.

sudo apt-get install nvidia-XXX

If you have installed a previous version you must purge. And if installed older bumblebee, purge that also as not used now.

sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia-*
sudo apt-get purge nvidia* bumblebee primus bbswitch-dkms

Installing Ubuntu-mate with dual boot option on Windows 10 - usb booting not happening

oldfred
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