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I've been trying for a couple of days now to get my 940M to work on Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS to no avail (currently stuck on login loop issue), and yet there doesn't appear to be much discussion of issues surrounding the card. I have a feeling that I'm overlooking something simple.

Has anyone else been able to get an Nvidia 940M to run on 14.04.4 LTS with Nvidia's proprietary drivers?

If so, how did you do it?

The nouveau drivers appear to work just fine, but I expect better performance with Nvidia's.

redbeardt
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  • Is there a compelling reason to stick to 14.04.4, which is two years old, for a card which came out in March last year? Try a LiveCD of the latest daily of 16.04LTS - if that works, do a release-upgrade. Changes are cosmetic at the moment, there won't change much until release on April 21. – emk2203 Apr 10 '16 at 06:49
  • 14.04.4 is that old?! I didn't know. I mostly downloaded it because I was advised that it would be a good idea to get the latest LTS distribution. I'm a recent Windows refugee. I will try installing 16.04 and report back! – redbeardt Apr 10 '16 at 06:55
  • 14.04. 4 is an update to the original 14.04 which is two years old. But even with an updated LTS enablement stack, the latest 16.04 with latest everything is a better fit for a recent nvidia graphics driver. – emk2203 Apr 10 '16 at 07:03
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    @emk2203 You give really bad advises. – Pilot6 Apr 10 '16 at 07:58
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    Ubuntu 14.04.4 is not old. It has kernel 4.2 and a new graphical stack. It has been released in Feb '16. – Pilot6 Apr 10 '16 at 07:59
  • @Pilot6: This would be bad advice if he runs a server. For a single-user laptop with recent hardware, It's certainly better to try a recent distribution just two weeks from release date, instead of making it work with a ppa.

    16.04 most certainly detects his graphics hardware correctly, as it did for my nvidia-prime system.

     – emk2203 Apr 10 '16 at 08:25
  • If you really wish to run the proprietary driver, then download it, and install from "recovery mode" (answer yes to all prompts). In case of updates making life hard; reboot into recovery mode and first do bash NVIDIA...blahblah.run --uninstall then do an immediate re-install ( bash NVIDIA...blahblah.run) . (Works for me in 14.04.4 with latest all) – Hannu Apr 10 '16 at 09:00
  • @Hannu: This was actually the last thing I tried before I posted this. It ended up messing up my install to such an extent that I couldn't even boot in low-graphics mode, and so I reinstalled 14.04.4. Uninstalling it didn't help either, by the way. – redbeardt Apr 10 '16 at 10:14
  • @emk2203 Your advice appears to have worked. I installed the latest daily of 16.04 LTS, installed the latest driver that popped up from ubuntu-drivers, rebooted, and that was it. glxinfo | grep OpenGL shows that the 940M is ready for OpenGL rendering. There was no login loop. Also, optimus-prime installed itself with the driver! Last, but not least, the touchpad issues I was having in 14.04.4LTS are gone too. Hurrah! If you want to post an answer, I can mark it as the solution. – redbeardt Apr 10 '16 at 10:34
  • @Redbeardt YMMV then, ... and you have hybrid graphics - you didn't tell about having a laptop (apart from M in the subject. – Hannu Apr 10 '16 at 11:29

3 Answers3

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You probably did not install nvidia-prime for your hybrid graphics.

Run in terminal

sudo apt-get install nvidia-352 nvidia-prime

If there are any errors, post output to your question. Then reboot.

You can also install a newer driver from a PPA

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-361 nvidia-prime

Both 352 and 361 drivers support Nvidia 940M adapter.

Pilot6
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Turns out the answer was simply installing a 16.04 LTS daily instead of 14.04.4 LTS, as suggested by @emk2203 in the OP comments!

After booting up the 16.04 LTS, everything went fairly smoothly compared to my stint on 14.04 LTS.

redbeardt
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To get rid of these and other hard-ware related troubles,test the latest, relatively stable liveCD - OP found out that the latest 16.04LTS (close to release candidate, kernel freeze today) not only fixes the graphics issue, but also other issues (touchpad).

After the test is successful, the usual way for existing systems is update-manager -d to get the most recent version of Ubuntu or a reinstall if you were testing Ubuntu support on a new hardware system.

Do this only if you see a hardware issue. Also, it should be a system with a single user, and not mission-critical. Laptops are prime candidates for this, since they usually have the most pesky hardware issues and the troublemakers inside are not exchangeable.

Downside of running the latest distribution is that in case of other issues, it's difficult to find existing solutions on the net. But you can always come to askubuntu.com for that.

Community
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emk2203
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