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Asked: 2018-10-30 09:42:14 +0800 CST

Would a different Ubuntu 18.10 distribution work better with NVIDIA graphics card?

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I am running Ubuntu 18.10 and am having problems with NVIDIA drivers. Would something like Mate, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu ... work better or are graphics driver problems at such a low level (the kernel?) that a different distribution wouldn't matter?

Note, I didn't have these problems with 18.04.

Edit to add more info:

Upgraded from 18.04 to 18.10. Installed nvidia-driver-390. Computer doesn't boot. Gets stuck around "starting gmome display manager" but sometime a bit before or a bit after. Installed the 410 drivers and the same thing happened. If I uninstall all Nvidia drivers I can boot. In /etc/gdm3/custom.conf, uncommented ...wayland=false. That allowed me to boot with Nvidia drivers. Problem is that after sleep, the computer screen is either 1)fine, 2)corrupt but still functional, or 3)corrupt and not functional (appears frozen but mouse pointer still moves.) Results seem random.

With the nouveau drivers the fan on the graphics card ran too fast even without running anything. There was another issues with them but I can't remember what it was now.

All of these things were experienced without any intense graphics programs running. At most just Firefox (no video was playing) and a terminal.

drivers nvidia graphics

2 Answers

  1. Whatever the exact nature of the problems you experience, switching to a different flavour is hardly going to help. This assumes that all the flavours run X11, the same kernels and use the same driver.

    One case where it could help, is if the severity of the problems you experience scale with the intensity of your graphic card's workload.

    Are these problems that only occur when the graphics card is being put to good use, or get worse under such condition? If so, switching to a more lightweight flavour might help a little bit.

    If whatever problem you are experiencing persists no matter what you are doing, even if the system is idle, or seems to appear at random, then different flavours would most likely suffer from the same problem.

    It should be rather simple to test out though, without having to reinstall your system. For instance, if you wanted to try xubuntu, it should be as simple as installing the 'xubuntu-desktop' package (ubuntu-desktop to go back).

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  2. There is a specific problem affecting GNOME Display Manager. At least in Ubuntu Budgie does not register. If you want to use Ubuntu you can solve it by doing sudo gedit /etc/gdm3/custom.conf and uncomment the line:

    WaylandEnable=false

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