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While using my laptop today for a span of 20 minutes I encountered a problem. My laptop suddenly froze. I was listening to music when the screen froze but the music was still playing. I've only recently installed ubuntu (two hours ago).

The issue is not overheating, it was at 50Celcius at the time it froze and my CPU was only at 10% on each core. It wasn't a out-of-memory issue either because I was only using 907mb/5763mb avaliable.

I'm currently using the NVIDIA binar driver - version 331.113 from nvidia-331-updates. My GPU is an NVIDIA GT 620M with 1GB of vram.

I think it might be a driver issue, because I was able to exit the xserver (cntrl + alt+ f3) and check my usage information using htop.

Please help me resolve this issue, oh and my system is version 14.10 :)

EDIT:

Would the following be an approach that would fix anything? 

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop
sudo apt-get install unity
sudo shutdown -r now

or would it cause more damage?

Paludan
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1 Answers1

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As you're familiar with Ctrl+Alt+F1, I suppose you're more technical then the reputation 1 you have here would suggest...

The standard Ubuntu NVidia drivers generate some problems on slightly older and slightly newer NVidia hardware.

If you want more then the standard Ubuntu repository drivers, install the xorg.edgers PPA. As the xorg.edgers group ask not to give installation instructions directly without linking to their page, this is the best I can do.

If you don't know what a PPA is or don't know how to choose different drivers or need some guidance after reading their page, leave a comment below.

Fabby
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  • And as you're a reputation 1 user: don't forget to click the grey check-mark under the "0" at the left of this text, therefore "accepting" the answer, which is better then saying "thank you" as your and my reputation will go up... – Fabby Dec 29 '14 at 14:54
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    I'm actually fairly experienced with Linux so I do know what a PPA is :P I've used Linux for the last 7 months (currently using i3 desktop environment on my personal laptop, not the laptop that's having issues). I've chosen Linux because of gcc being standard here :P (University work). I was considering using bumblebee since the laptop that is having issues has nvidia optimus. Also do you know if the GPU model I have has any issues with the 331 version of nvidia? – Paludan Dec 29 '14 at 15:56
  • IMNSHO the standard packaged NVidia drivers are a lot of bovine excrement. (to put it politely) I'm very happy with xorg.edgers and can pick and choose the driver that best suits my needs... – Fabby Dec 29 '14 at 16:04
  • Still better than nouvou.. Nvidia hates Linux :D God it's a never ending battle with Nvidia ^^ I'll try downgrading the drivers and if nothing helps, then I'll just use the onboard HD 4000 card.. I know it sucks, but that laptop is for nothing else but browsing and document handling :P – Paludan Dec 29 '14 at 16:06
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYWzMvlj2RQ – Fabby Dec 29 '14 at 16:11
  • Haha yeah he's great :D – Paludan Dec 29 '14 at 16:12
  • actually there are known workarounds to the Nvidia problem: http://askubuntu.com/a/578820/149354; there is also a patch coming from them but yeah, it sucks that it's so unstable in the meantime – Gabor Jan 28 '15 at 13:03
  • @fabby, so I actually installed this edgers thingy and it did not help the freezing... i still think the patch will be only in the next ubuntu release – Gabor Feb 16 '15 at 09:33