1

I have noticed lately that my screen has gone black for a couple seconds, then went back to normal. This will happen regardless of the application I am in, and in a bad spell will occur every 30 seconds or so. Through some research and suggestions from friends, I have tried to diagnose this as a driver issue. I have an Nvidia GeForce 755m graphics card, which works fine with my Windows 8.1 configuration. I have tried to download the proper drivers for my graphics card and there is always an error when I run the file. Here is the link for the driver I tried to download: http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/78469/en-us

Is Nvidia supported in linux? Please let me know what I am doing wrong.

Thank you!

Improve this question
2
  • does it completely go black or does it go to a dark greyish translucent color and back to normal?
    – astrob0t
    Nov 5, 2014 at 0:30
  • Completely black. This is different from the usual screen timeout thing.
    – user300329
    Nov 5, 2014 at 15:21

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
0

nVidia Geforce 755m is a mobile chipset with nVidia Optimus technology. It is very well supported in Ubuntu.

I have had some issues using the generic Nouveau drivers. I faced similar issues as you(i used to get black screen and that used to log me out forcefully. I would then login and just pray to install the nvidia drivers before the blackout occurs again. I was too naive to press ctrl+alt+f1 and install the drivers from the terminal). So i installed the Nvidia proprietary drivers from Ubuntu Repository and that resolved the black screen issues.

Instead of downloading drivers from nvidia website you can do what i did. If you are on unity, go to unity dash and search for additional drivers. This will then list out the supported drivers for your card. You can then activate the proprietary and tested nvidia drivers. This should resolve your issue.

This would install a nVidia control panel from where you can switch between nVidia or intel chipset for graphics processing. There is also an ongoing Bumblebee Project which will allow you to dynamically switch between the chipsets. But this is a bit advanced tech for me. So i will leave it upto you to decide if you want to try out bumblebee or simply install the proprietary nVidia drivers.

Improve this answer
1
  • Worked perfectly, I was using Nouveau drivers and switched to nvidia, everything works great now. Thank you!
    – user300329
    Nov 7, 2014 at 16:48

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .