Ubuntu 16.04: nvidia drivers for GeForce GTX 960M

Question

Some time ago I asked a similar question about Ubuntu 14.04.

Now I just installed Ubuntu 16.04, hoping that with the new version the graphic card was recognized effortless. Sadly I still have a similar issue.

I have an Asus N551JW laptop with these two graphic cards:

• Integrated Intel® HD Graphics 4600
• NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 960M 2G GDDR5

By default, Ubuntu recognizes the Intel graphic card but not the NVIDIA one.

I tried installing NVIDIA's drivers from System Settings > Software & Updates > Additional Software:

But when I restart the system I'm not longer able to access. I see the login screen but when I insert the password I'm brought back to the login screen again.

In the question I linked above there is a solution working for Ubuntu 14.04, can I use the same procedure also on Ubuntu 16.04? Or is there a new way to correctly install NVIDIA drivers?

---

EDIT

I tried as described in these other answers:

Graphics issues after/while installing Ubuntu 16.04/16.10 with NVIDIA graphics

and also as suggested by @Amias Channer.

I installed nvidia-364 with:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-364

The installation asked me to disable Secure Boot for an incompatibility problem and I accepted to disable it.

I restarted and the login worked good, without problems.

In System Settings > Software & Updates > Additional Software now I see this:

But I still see "Intel® Haswell Mobile" in System > Details (as in the first image above).

What should I do now? How can I enable the NVIDIA graphic card?

Solution 1

This file was modified by the Community with no fresh time stamps after May 7 2016, but there should be one for Sep 16 2016 because it showed up on the active list.

The answer above sudo apt-add-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa today results with:

 Fresh drivers from upstream, currently shipping Nvidia.

## Current Status

We currently recommend: `nvidia-367`, Nvidia's current long lived branch.
For GeForce 8 and 9 series GPUs use `nvidia-340`
For GeForce 6 and 7 series GPUs use `nvidia-304`

nvidia-370 is the current BETA release!

## What we're working on right now:

- Normal driver updates
- Investigating how to bring this goodness to distro on a cadence.

## WARNINGS:

This PPA is currently in testing, you should be experienced with packaging before you dive in here. Give us a few days to sort out the kinks.

Volunteers welcome! See also: https://github.com/mamarley/nvidia-graphics-drivers/

### How you can help:

## Install PTS and benchmark your gear:

    sudo apt-get install phoronix-test-suite

Run the benchmark:

    phoronix-test-suite default-benchmark openarena xonotic tesseract gputest unigine-valley

and then say yes when it asks you to submit your results to openbechmarking.org. Then grab a cup of coffee, it takes a bit for the benchmarks to run. Depending on the version of Ubuntu you're using it might preferable for you to grabs PTS from upstream directly: http://www.phoronix-test-suite.com/?k=downloads

## Share your results with the community:

Post a link to your results (or any other feedback to): https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers-testers

Remember to rerun and resubmit the benchmarks after driver upgrades, this will allow us to gather a bunch of data on performance that we can share with everybody.

If you run into old documentation referring to other PPAs, you can help us by consolidating references to this PPA.

If someone wants to go ahead and start prototyping on `software-properties-gtk` on what the GUI should look like, please start hacking!

## Help us Help You!

We use the donation funds to get the developers hardware to test and upload these drivers, please consider donating to the "community" slider on the donation page if you're loving this PPA:

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/contribute
 More info: https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa
Press [ENTER] to continue or ctrl-c to cancel adding it

Be advised there are instructions on Nvidia site about disadvantages of upgrading Debian (which Ubuntu is based on) versus clean install.

Also be advised Nvidia website might have special instructions for Haswell, however their current drivers use the same one from my lowly GT650M up to OP's GT760M but there can be all kinds of recommended changes in other areas of the system based on Intel CPU and/or systemd or Debian.

Also there are special circumstances like the OP where Integrated Graphics and Discrete Graphics aka "Hybrid Graphics" are built into the Motherboard.

The Nvidia website does talk about black screens that are common questions in A.U. (Ask Ubuntu) so it's a worthwhile visit for most reading the OP's question.

Solution 2

According to the Nvidia driver web site the GTX 960M is supported by driver 367.35 & driver 364.19. An earlier driver such as 340.96 does not support GTX 960M.

The newest version of Ubuntu is preferable. And if it is an LTS version then we should be installing the latest point release. With 14.04 that would be 14.04.2 with 14.04.3 being released at the end of August. And 16.04 should be getting its first point release (16.04.1) at the end of July. The purpose of these point releases is to keep the release up to date with hardware drivers for hardware that came out after the LTS was released.

How have you been going about installing the proprietary video driver? There are three methods. (1) When installing Ubuntu tick the box to install third party software. (2) After installation we go to System Settings>Software & Updates>Additional Drivers tab. (3) We use the terminal and run this command

sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

That will install the recommended proprietary video driver. What method are you using? This command will list the officially available proprietary video drivers:

ubuntu-drivers list

Allow time for the command to work. A Nvidia settings utility will also be installed. Use that to switch from integrated graphics to Nvidia graphics.

Solution 3

Go to terminal and use sudo prime-select nvidia. There are three of them: sudo prime-select intel (to use the intel card) sudo prime-select nvidia (to use the nvidia card) sudo prime-select query (to see which one is selected) After typeing i terminal choosen statment intel or nvidia logout and log in or restart your laptop.

Works on dell inspiron 7559 with intel and nvidia gtx960m

Solution 4

If you add the graphics drivers PPA you will get a lot more versions of the nvidia driver, one of which should work for you , i would guess nvidia-364

ppa info page https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

To add the ppa and install the nvidia-364:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-364 nvidia-prime

If the problem persists try one of the other nvidia driver packages you can generate a list using this command:

sudo apt-cache search '^nvidia-[:digit]' --names-only

View more solutions

Comments

[Videonauth]

You could try to use the non proprietary drivers, have a look into this solution. Maybe this fixes your problem.

[Andrea]

@Videonauth Thank you for the link. I tried solutions from that post but I still do not have the NVIDIA graphic card working. See my last edit.

[Clock ZHONG]

how you get the GUI running with Ubuntu 16.04 on Asus N551V? When I install Ubuntu 16.04, the screen will stuck there.

[Andrea]

@ClockZHONG I installed Ubuntu and it just worked...

[Andrea]

How do I know which version will works for my graphic card?

[Andrea]

I installed nvidia-364. The installation asked me to disable Secure Boot and I disabled it. I restarted and the login worked good, without problems but I still see Intel® Haswell Mobile in System > Details. What should I do now?

[Amias]

thats how it works , the integrated graphics card uses the nvidia hardware when it needs it. You don't use it directly in an optimus configuration, it was only in early versions of the linux support for it that you had to switch. all you need do now is something demanding with the 3d like run steam or one of the chrome experiements.