NVidia GeForce GTX 680M Driver Error

Hardware Support
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1

I'm currently running Zorin OS 17.2 Core, on an Alienware M17xR4 Laptop with a NVidia GeForce GTX 608M discrete GPU. I have attempted to install the recommended nvidia-driver-390 through the software updater, but get the following error:

NVidia GeForce GTX 680M Install
NVidia GeForce GTX 680M Install715×527 34.9 KB

NVidia GeForce GTX 680M Install Error
NVidia GeForce GTX 680M Install Error700×201 12.8 KB

I even tried installing from the Kelebek repo, with:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kelebek333/nvidia-legacy

sudo apt update && sudo apt install nvidia-driver-390

but it also errored:

dpkg: error processing package nvidia-driver-390 (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Setting up xserver-xorg-video-nvidia-390 (390.157-0ubuntu+klbkjammy1.1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.10.2-1) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.35-0ubuntu3.8) ...
Processing triggers for initramfs-tools (0.140ubuntu13.4) ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-6.8.0-45-generic
Errors were encountered while processing:
 nvidia-dkms-390
 nvidia-driver-390
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

does anyone have any advice? Here is my sudo lshw -C video

  *-display                 
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: GK104M [GeForce GTX 680M]
       vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
       logical name: /dev/fb0
       version: a1
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom fb
       configuration: depth=32 driver=nouveau latency=0 resolution=1920,1080
       resources: irq:36 memory:c0000000-c0ffffff memory:a0000000-afffffff memory:b0000000-b1ffffff ioport:3000(size=128) memory:c0000-dffff
2

I think this has to do with your kernel. This one has to be downgraded in order to get the legacy driver to work.

2 Likes
3

Yup, after a bit more research it did indeed appear I needed to roll back to a 5.15 kernel to use the older NVidia 390 drivers... however I botched the rollback (badly, hosed the OS entirely). So what I ended up doing was just installing Zorin 16.3 Core which already used the 5.15 kernel and all was good.

1 Like
4

I had to do the same thing for another laptop with a AMD Radeon R9 M370X GPU. Does anyone know if there is an upgrade path from Zorin 16.3 to 17.2 where I can keep the 5.15 kernel? I'd love to be on the latest version, but I really need the official drivers to get the best performance in some cases.