I've just switched to Zorin 17 Pro from Mint 21.2 on my ROG Zephyrus G15 with RTX 3060. I've been using a USB-c HDMI splitter to extend my display to 2 external monitors. But since my migration, all my displays freeze after a few minutes of using the HDMI splitter.
$ nvidia-smi
Mon Jan 8 10:13:11 2024
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 535.129.03 Driver Version: 535.129.03 CUDA Version: 12.2 |
|-----------------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU Name Persistence-M | Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap | Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. |
| | | MIG M. |
|=========================================+======================+======================|
| 0 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 ... Off | 00000000:01:00.0 On | N/A |
| N/A 45C P8 16W / 80W | 271MiB / 6144MiB | 40% Default |
| | | N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes: |
| GPU GI CI PID Type Process name GPU Memory |
| ID ID Usage |
|=======================================================================================|
| 0 N/A N/A 1942 G /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg 149MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 4219 C+G ...seed-version=20240105-201042.648000 106MiB |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Kernel version:
$ uname -r
6.2.0-39-generic
It's important to note that this is a GPU issue as all other resources are unaffected. I can still hear and speak to people on video conferences, etc...
This issue used to happen when I was using Ubuntu 20.04, which I resolved by rebuild/installing nvidia modules directly from Nvidia's site. However this meant that every time there is a kernel update I had to repeat the process. Very annoying! However this all went away when i switched to Mint 21.2 8 months ago.
I'm happy to work with 1 external monitor using the HDMI outlet on the laptop for the time being but it would be great to have all 3 displays working using the OS shipped drivers, so that they are updated along with the rest of the system updates, like it was with Mint 21.2.
Manual installation did not improve matters, but manual attempt to install 535 complained kernel source version and running kernel version did not match. Could this be the problem? I've seen this when installing Nvidia drivers on Arch!
Ok. I've made a right old dogs breakfast of this now. In order to manually install I 1st had to uninstall 545, then install Nouveau. Then manually run 535 downloaded from Nvidia's site. After installing I got the error:
$ nvidia-smi
Failed to initialize NVML: Driver/library version mismatch
NVML library version: 535.146
$ cat /proc/driver/nvidia/version
Revealed that the boot image is still referring to 545, so I tried this:
Bit of an update on this. The 1st set of kernel updates came through today "6.5." The drivers broke with the screens freezing when monitors are hooked up through the USB-C splitter. I was just about to reinstall the drivers manually, when a 2nd set of updates came through and it seem to have fixed the issue. unfortunately I didn't take note of the updates as I didn't expect them to fix the problem.
It looks like some updates break the drivers while others fix them. I'll keep an eye out for next lot of kernel updates.
