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I'd like to remove the nvidia video driver and revert to the xorg, but I haven't been able to boot in recovery mode. Any suggestions ?
I can boot from the installation disk, in the live disk mode, and edit/add/remove files.

I tried a few things:
1. Ctrl-Alt-F1 to F4 don't take me to a command line where I can try something.
2. The "left-shift" button during boot or the "ESC" button during boot don't seem to work for me.
3. I copied /etc/X11/xorg.conf.failsafe to xog.conf, and then tried rebooting, and it didn't work either.
4. I edited /etc/default/grub to try a few things:
* Changed the parameter GRUB_DEFAULT to 1, 2, and 3 (instead of 0)
* Commenting out GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0 and GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET
* Enabling GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480

FYI:
I installed Ubuntu 13.10 on a desktop with nvidia GeForce 210 video card.
(Motherboard: MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum “MS-7125”m, with newest BIOS: V1.D, 250 GB SATA HDD, SATA DVD/CD drive, 4 GB RAM.)
Then I changed the driver to the NVIDIA driver 319, and now Ubuntu doesn't get to the initial login screen anymore.

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  • Run the live disc, and chroot into your system. Remove the nvidia packages with apt-get. That should fix it. (No warranty included.) gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/… (THIS PART: Mounting the necessary Filesystems AND THIS: Entering the new Environment . And next time set up SSH on your own PC with private keys. So if you have a laptop, or you can borrow one, it's easier to fix issues.)
    – Apache
    Dec 1, 2013 at 23:09
  • Shiki: Thank you for the suggestion. I'm not familiar with chroot, so I'll do some reading before trying it (hopefully soon).
    – Edgardo
    Dec 2, 2013 at 5:54

1 Answer 1

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Thanks to Shiki's chroot suggestion, here is how I was able to revert to the open source display driver:
Reference: http://www.tuxation.com/chrooting-into-a-linux-environment.html

I started booting with the Ubuntu 13.10 installation disk, selecting to "Try" Ubuntu.
Then I opened a terminal window (clicked on the upper left corner icon, and typed: Terminal, to find it)
Then, I typed this sequence of commands:
sudo su
fdisk -l
(Now I looked for the device name of the bootable partition. There is a "Boot" column with an asterix in the line corresponding to the bootable partition. In my case, it was: /dev/sda1 )
ls /mnt (to confirm that nothing was mounted in there yet)
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
mount -t proc none /mnt/proc
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount -o bind /sys /mnt/sys ( I added this from another help page )
chroot /mnt
source /etc/profile
(I remembered installing an updated nvidia driver with number 319, but I looked for the exact name to remove in:
System Settings > Software & Updates > Additional Drivers
There is probably a better way to find the name.)
apt-get remove nvidia-319-updates
mv xorg.conf xorg.conf_bad (Just in case. I don't know if this matters.)

Then, I restarted the computer booting to the HDD installation, tried a few random things and re-booted to confirm that it wasn't a fluke :-)

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