What's the correct driver to use with a GeForce 6150SE nforce 430 on Ubuntu and Ubuntu flavours?

Question

I've tried three other posts about how to install drivers for

1. NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE nForce 430

2. Video Drivers for Onboard GeForce 6150SE

3. Nvidia geforce 6150-unity 3d won't work

The problem is I've tried installing all the drivers suggested, one by one, test them, remove them, install another and until now the one which is working best is nouveau, but It also freezes the screen on random actions, most notably when I start Firefox.

If you have this card installed and working well please tell us what driver/distribution/configuration you are using. Thank you.

Xorg.0.log file: http://pastebin.com/8HLG59y7

syslog tells me this:

Feb 23 11:55:19 xxxxxxx kernel: [ 48.418101] systemd-logind[1202]: Failed to start unit [email protected]: Unknown unit: [email protected]

Feb 23 13:22:30 xxxxxx kernel: [ 5286.305415] nouveau E[ PBUS][0000:00:0d.0] MMIO write of 0x00000000 FAULT at 0x00b010

Solution 1

I found that the correct driver (working well now for two days) is the nvidia-304 which can be installed from repositories. This might be problematic if you are making a clean install because the Geforce 6150SE will not work well when installing from the Ubuntu DVD: the Ubuntu live session will freeze, so follow this sequence:

1. Boot from the DVD and press Space to choose different methods of installation.
2. Choose Experienced Install.
3. Install Ubuntu.
4. After install is done, press CTRL+ALT+F1 and login.

5. Update your system:

   sudo apt-get update

   sudo apt-get upgrade

6. Install the driver:

   sudo apt-get install nvidia-304

7. DO NOT run nvidia-xconfig (THIS IS IMPORTANT).

8. Reboot the system (just press CTRL+ALT+DEL)
9. Login normally.
10. Open Nvidia X server settings from the dash.
11. Backup your configuration (you can copy and paste it to a txt file)

I hope this helps others, it's worked for me (so far).

Solution 2

Correct can mean lots of things.

The nvidia drivers are proprietary and do not integrate well with the rest of the free software ecosystem and community. The nouveau driver is the preferred one, but in Debian testing and unstable it has a bug with the 6150SE, which you can workaround by inserting into /etc/modprobe.d/local-video.conf:

options nouveau noaccel=1

Comments

[oldtechaa]

This also means you have no hardware acceleration.

[lapisdecor]

If you still have problems try sudo apt install nvidia-304=304.131-0ubuntu3 nvidia-opencl-icd-304=304.131-0ubuntu3

[Xen2050]

Using shutdown --reboot now might be preferrable to ctrl-alt-del, I'm not sure if all filesystems would get unmounted cleanly with ctrl-alt-del

[Diogo Gomes]

This fix doesn't work in Xubuntu 16.04

[Diogo Gomes]

This fix doesn't work in Xubuntu 16.04. The system lost the resolution.

[Kulfy]

I'm not sure if same fix goes for Ubuntu.