I am experiencing a frustrating boot issue with my Zorin OS laptop, which has an NVIDIA RTX 3060 GPU. I would appreciate any guidance or solutions you might have.
The Core Problem:
When I have the proprietary NVIDIA drivers installed (from the "Software & Updates" > "Additional Drivers" section), my laptop gets stuck at the Zorin logo splash screen during boot. It never proceeds to the login screen.
Successful Workarounds and Key Observations:
I have found a few workarounds that allow me to boot the system, and they provide some clues as to what might be wrong:
"F8 Spam" Method: If I repeatedly press the F8 key immediately after pressing the power button, the boot process changes. Instead of the graphical Zorin logo, a verbose, text-based boot sequence appears on the screen. After the text scrolls by, the system successfully boots into the desktop with the NVIDIA drivers fully functional. This seems to indicate that the issue is related to the graphical boot process (Plymouth splash screen) conflicting with the NVIDIA driver initialization.
Uninstalling NVIDIA Drivers: If I completely remove the NVIDIA drivers (e.g., using sudo apt-get purge 'nvidia'), the laptop boots perfectly every time without any intervention. Of course, this means I am not using my dedicated GPU and its performance.
Enabling Secure Boot: I discovered that if I enable Secure Boot in my BIOS/UEFI, the laptop also boots without any issues. However, I correctly realized that this is not a real fix. With Secure Boot enabled, the kernel does not load the proprietary NVIDIA driver because it is not signed. The system simply falls back to the open-source nouveau driver or the integrated GPU, which is the same outcome as uninstalling the driver. This observation confirms that the proprietary NVIDIA driver is the direct cause of the boot freeze.
My Question and Constraints:
I am staying in a university dormitory with a limited internet data plan. Because of this, I cannot afford to download and test every single available NVIDIA driver version to see which one might be stable.
Could you please offer some advice?
Is there a known "golden" or particularly stable NVIDIA driver version for an RTX 3060 on Zorin OS that I should try first?
Or is this issue likely unrelated to the specific driver version and more about a boot configuration problem (like a GRUB setting or a conflict with Kernel Mode Setting)?
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am ready to provide any necessary logs or system information.
Thank you in advance!