I have a bit of an older laptop (ASUS UL50VT) and I am not able to get the Nvidia gpu working because it can't find the drivers for it in the Additional Drivers. I believe that it has an NVIDIA GeForce G210M GPU.
Side question, most of my usb flash drives I can't seem to get to be read by this laptop, the only one that this laptop manages to read is this really old flash drive that I found in the medicine drawer last year (lol). Not sure if the issue there is certain newer format types just not being supported or something like that.
I think your card is to old for restricted drivers. But as long you're not into gaming this shouldn't be a problem with the open nvidia driver that is in use.
Yes, the FAT32 Format is a good Option. You could try to format the other Stick's to that Format, too. But only when there are no important Data on it. In that Case You have to secure the Data first and then formt the Stick.
Also, it sounds like the NVIDIA 340.xx Legacy drivers is what my gpu calls for, but I think I was reading in another forum that these drivers are not supported in more recent versions of the Linux kernel.
I'm very much a Linux newbie, so would looking for a distro that uses an older linux kernel be a viable solution? Are there any distros that continue support for older linux kernels?
Well, I did that and got excited because in display settings the Nvidia gpu name appeared for graphics and it showed in additional drivers that it was now using a proprietary driver. But then I went to reboot, saw the Zorin logo, and now it's just a black screen. Has been like this for 5 min. Is it likely that there is a conflict with this legacy driver?
You can boot into Grub Menu (tap esc or tab if using EFI boot or hold Left Shift key if using MBR legacy boot) and arrow key to Advanced Options to choose a different kernel to boot into or to access (Recovery) and Root - drop to prompt in order to reach a terminal.
Sorry for the late reply, it says that I am using 6.8.0-40-generic. I just reinstalled ZorinOS to get it working again. I found this post that said that the driver I need is not supported by the 5.15 linux kernel: Driver for GeForce 210 under Linux - Linux - NVIDIA Developer Forums
What would you advise? Is it worth downgrading the kernel to try and utilize the gpu or should I stick with what ZorinOS came with for my laptop?
I would definitely downgrade the kernel. The older kernels contain all the drivers needed for older hardware. You only usually need the latest if you have the newest hardware.
You can install the earlier kernel with
You must reboot into the older kernel to test - And some users report that the system has been (cough) defaulting to a value of 0 for the grub timeout (Why? It's a mystery...)
sudo nano /etc/default/grub
Change the timeout value to 5. GRUB_TIMEOUT:5
Some set it to a quicker 3 seconds, I have mine set to 10 seconds... I recommend no quicker than three seconds, though or you may have to reboot a few times just to catch the wascawy wabbit.
Tap ctl+o to overwrite, then the enter key to save current configuration. Tap ctl+x to exit. Now run sudo update-grub
Reboot, then tap tab or esc beginning at the motherboard splash screen to pull up the grub menu (You can also change the grub style from "hidden" to "menu" to avoid having to bap these keys in the grub file above).
From Grub Menu - select Advanced Options for Zorin, then select Zorin on 5.15.0-101 to boot from.
If everything is working on that kernel, you can use this guide to lock it in as default boot.
Thank you so much for all of the info for this. I just wanted to ask, where should I look to find which Linux kernel version would support that driver? The post that I linked made it sound like that 5.15 does not support the driver and that I would maybe need something even older.
You should be fine, even if using the 6.0 kernel... I went to 5.15 in my post for peace of mind. But the kelebek Legacy Drivers should work on 5.15. It is the Nvidia directly supplied driver that may not work on later kernels.
I went through the guide for making sure to set the older kernel to boot as default, I saved it, updated the grub file, and rebooted. But when it rebooted, it rebooted back into the newer kernel.
I then reset and booted back into the older kernel checked to see it the changes stuck and
GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=true
were still there. Would it be better to remove the newer kernel altogether?
I downgraded my GPU by buying a second hand, unused GT440 in order to get PCLinuxOS to boot (it could not boot with a GT1030). Similar issue, happy to just use Linux kernel noveau drivers, as I have had nothing but problems when running proprietary drivers for nVidia in any GNU/Linux OS.
I must not have updated grub like I thought. After I woke up I booted back into 5.15, updated grub in terminal, rebooted and it booted into 5.15. Success!
Should I now go about installing at driver for my gpu again? Also, I just noticed that for my graphics right now it says NVA8 / Intel Mobile GM45 Express Chipset. I'm not sure if it had said NVA8 there before.