Display driver issue on Dell Vostro i5 with Ubuntu 17.10

Question

I just installed Ubuntu 17.10 in my DELL Vostro i5 laptop. Initially Ubuntu was showing a blank screen after booting, but when I added nomodeset in GRUB, then I was able to see the login screen and use the system.

Now Ubuntu is not detecting my display and no video drivers are loaded and the screen is flickering while scrolling and it makes really hard to use the system.

Executing lspci | grep VGA | cut -d " " -f 1 | xargs lspci -vv -s gives me the following result:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation HD Graphics 620 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Dell HD Graphics 620
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
Latency: 0
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 11
Region 0: Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Region 2: Memory at c0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Region 4: I/O ports at f000 [size=64]
[virtual] Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel modules: i915

Solution

The graphics device that you have in your computer is still relatively new, and support for that device is still maturing. Currently you are using what is referred to as the "i915" driver. At some point it can be expected that Ubuntu will more fully support this device 'Out of the box'.

This does not solve your current problem, and there are a few things that you can attempt to use to improve graphics support now.

In no particular order:

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the Updated and Optimized Open Graphics Drivers often called the Oibaf drivers are available as a PPA, and may provide some improvement for your system. I used these drivers for my system several version ago, and foudn them quite useful. Please read the de-installation instructions carefully.

The xorg-edgers fresh X crack PPA is closer to the bleeding edge of graphics driver development, and may make your system perform better, or possible become less than fully stable. Please read the de-installation instructions carefully.

For both of these PPAs, removal of the drivers is fairly simple: Install the package PPA-PURGE (sudo apt install ppa-purge) and execute either sudo ppa-purge ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa or sudo ppa-purge ppa:xorg-edgers/ppaor sudo ppa-purge ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers

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Finally Intel does provide graphics drivers for Linux, although I have had poor experiences with these. They are available at 01.org, and some instructions about removal of these drivers can be found here on AskUbuntu, Currently they support Ubuntu 17.04 and linux kernel 4.10.

Comments

[Charles Green]

Can you add some information about what type of video card you have? lspci | grep VGA | cut -d " " -f 1 | xargs lspci -vv -s will show a bunch of information, and the results should be appended to your question, please.

[Apin Pratap]

video card details using the specified command added to the question.

[Apin Pratap]

Thank you for the reply. After trying your suggestions and lots of searching following has happened. I updated BIOS in my Laptop and it allowed me to boot into Ubuntu 17.10 without setting nomodeset in GRUB, and the video driver also worked fine, but then Ubuntu stopped working when everI tried to connect to Wifi. After trying to connect to Wifi nothing works except opening terminal, but no commands are executed by terminal also. It just hangs.

[Apin Pratap]

Since my work got affected due to this, I had to delete my entire harddisk/partition to install older Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. Now everything works fine :-) and I am done with Ubuntu 17.10, no more Ubuntu upgrades in future