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TheWanderer
Asked: 2016-01-30 16:51:40 +0800 CST

Display Manager Crashes on Dual Monitors with GNOME 3

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I don't know if this problem has been here since I installed Ubuntu, as I don't remember if I ever used multiple monitors before now on my laptop while in Ubuntu.

Here's the situation:

I have an Ubuntu GNOME 15.10 installation. Today, I needed to use another monitor, so I plugged it in. As soon as I did that, however, the screen started flashing, showed some verbose status text (too quickly to read), then went to a blank screen. I was able to get into TTYs, but I had to reboot to get my desktop back. The time when I plug my monitor is doesn't seem to matter; before boot, on the login screen, and after login all have the same result.

However: LightDM gets a step further than GDM. Instead of just completely crashing, I'm either logged out, or am unable to login (login loop). If I try Unity or KDE or Cinnamon or any other DE, then I can login fine. I (surprisingly it seems) really like GNOME 3, and would love to get my desktop back, with the ability for multiple monitors.

I have tried purging and reinstalling everything related to GNOME, but it hasn't worked.

Xorg logs don't seem to contain anything of importance, but I can add them if necessary.

My video card is the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M. I am using the proprietary driver, version 352.63.

I know I left some steps out, so sorry if I dismiss a suggestion :).

Any help is greatly appreciated.

nvidia

2 Answers

  1. First of all, although it is possible to use several desktop environments with Ubuntu, that is, what I would like to call it, not recommended. Original Ubuntu comes with Unity desktop and LightDM deeply integrated into the operating system. Ubuntu GNOME is designed for being used with GNOME desktop and Kubuntu is designed for being used with KDE desktop. So you should consider to use one of these editions with only one, the matching desktop environment.
    As you are having very new graphics hardware and problems, install the latest drivers.
    NVIDIA fixes many bugs and improves the drivers software with every new release.

    Step 1 : Remove the currently installed NVIDIA drivers.

    Highlight the Ubuntu menu entry and press the E key.
    Add nouveau.modeset=0 to the end of the linux line.
    Press the F10 key to boot into the Ubuntu system.

    When the login screen appears press Ctrl+Alt+F1.
    Enter your user name and the password and execute : 

    sudo apt-get purge nvidia*
sudo reboot

    Step 2 : Install the latest official stable NVIDIA drivers.

    Highlight the Ubuntu menu entry and press the E key.
    Add nouveau.modeset=0 to the end of the linux line.
    Press the F10 key to boot into the Ubuntu system.

    When the login screen appears press Ctrl+Alt+F1.
    Enter your user name and the password and execute : 

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-358 nvidia-prime
sudo reboot

    After the NVIDIA drivers are installed, adding the boot parameter is not necessary anymore.
    Use NVIDIA X Server Settings (PRIME Profiles) to switch between intel and NVIDIA graphics.

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  2. If Wayland is an option for you: Give it a try on a very recent Ubuntu (18.x). I had the impression Wayland is very good in high resolution multi monitor displaying. You may install Wayland as additional window manager option to keep fall back solutions. Since my distro came with Wayland I can not tell how to install if not there by default, sorry.

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