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Calamity Jane
Asked: 2018-05-12 05:14:20 +0800 CST

no GUI after upgrade to kubuntu 18.04 nvdia GeForce 840M strongly suspected

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I updated my kubuntu from 17.04 to 18.04 by updating to 17.10 and directly continuing to 18.04

After reboot Plasma didn't come up, but luckily via alt + F2 I get a bash.

I have a Dell Latitude E5450 with a Nvidia GeForce 840M, latter is a plain pain in the ass since I got this laptop. So I strongly suspect that it is the culprit this time, too.

sudo ubuntu-drivers devices

gives me

  • nvidia-390 as recommended
  • nvidia-340
  • nouveau as open source driver

I tried all of them and every time I get stuck with a black screen and a cursor, which doesn't even blink.

How can I check if the culprit is really the graphics card (again....) or something else? Which log do I have to check?

And if it is in fact the graphic card, has someone ideas how to solve this mess?

This question seems to solve the problem for Gnome, but I use kde: No GUI after Kubuntu 18.04 LTS upgrade from 17.10

sudo apt-get --reinstall install plasma-desktop

Hasn't got any effect.

nvidia kubuntu 18.04

4 Answers

  1. I think it is a problem with nvidia drivers. After login to console check journalctl -xb and look on Xorg part of logs. If you have kernel 4.16 probably you should try to install v396.24 - downloadable from nvidia support site. Check what show dkms status

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  2. What I finally did was a new install by shrinking my partition and install it on a new one fresh. And: Tadaaa.... I saw colours. Graphics.... and have to configure my huge load of applications again. Luckily I made a backup before.

    So the upgrade performance was totally shitty, while the actual installation of the system worked. No clue why.

    sudo ubuntu-drivers devices

    still show the same output, but the GUI is present.

    Sorry that I cannot give any more help other than: Don't upgrade, reinstall. Again upgrade it didn't work. :(

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  3. I don't think this has anything to do with your nvidia drivers. I had the exact same problem; apparently, when you run kde / plasma, you end up with nothing when running the normal upgrade procedure.

    I can't find back my history, but I think I ran the following in the end:

    $ sudo dpkg-reconfigure plasma-desktop
$ sudo systemctl restart display-manager.service

    After that you still have to select 'plasma' as desktop before logging in! Also, then plasmashell crashed when I clicked a panel, but after ALT-F2 and typing 'plasmashell' that restarted again and then everything was ok.

    Edit: added the second sudo command. I'm not 100% sure what I did, or what is needed; but if this helps someone then please add a comment ;).

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  4. Try restart the plasmashell: kquitapp5 plasmashell && kstart5 plasmashell

    note: I use nvidia 440 proprietary driver on KDE Neon 20.04 using 'Performance Mode' PRIME profile in nvidia-setting

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