Ubuntu – Ubuntu 16.04: nvidia drivers for GeForce GTX 960M

16.04driversgraphicsnvidiaxorg

Some time ago I asked a similar question about Ubuntu 14.04.

Now I just installed Ubuntu 16.04, hoping that with the new version the graphic card was recognized effortless. Sadly I still have a similar issue.

I have an Asus N551JW laptop with these two graphic cards:

  • Integrated Intel® HD Graphics 4600
  • NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 960M 2G GDDR5

By default, Ubuntu recognizes the Intel graphic card but not the NVIDIA one.

enter image description here

I tried installing NVIDIA's drivers from System Settings > Software & Updates > Additional Software:

enter image description here

But when I restart the system I'm not longer able to access. I see the login screen but when I insert the password I'm brought back to the login screen again.

In the question I linked above there is a solution working for Ubuntu 14.04, can I use the same procedure also on Ubuntu 16.04? Or is there a new way to correctly install NVIDIA drivers?

EDIT

I tried as described in these other answers:

Graphics issues after/while installing Ubuntu 16.04/16.10 with NVIDIA graphics

and also as suggested by @Amias Channer.

I installed nvidia-364 with: 

sudo apt-get install nvidia-364

The installation asked me to disable Secure Boot for an incompatibility problem and I accepted to disable it.

I restarted and the login worked good, without problems.

In System Settings > Software & Updates > Additional Software now I see this:

enter image description here

But I still see "Intel® Haswell Mobile" in System > Details (as in the first image above).

What should I do now? How can I enable the NVIDIA graphic card?

Best Answer

This file was modified by the Community with no fresh time stamps after May 7 2016, but there should be one for Sep 16 2016 because it showed up on the active list.

The answer above sudo apt-add-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa today results with:

 Fresh drivers from upstream, currently shipping Nvidia.

## Current Status

We currently recommend: `nvidia-367`, Nvidia's current long lived branch.
For GeForce 8 and 9 series GPUs use `nvidia-340`
For GeForce 6 and 7 series GPUs use `nvidia-304`

nvidia-370 is the current BETA release!

## What we're working on right now:

- Normal driver updates
- Investigating how to bring this goodness to distro on a cadence.

## WARNINGS:

This PPA is currently in testing, you should be experienced with packaging before you dive in here. Give us a few days to sort out the kinks.

Volunteers welcome! See also: https://github.com/mamarley/nvidia-graphics-drivers/

### How you can help:

## Install PTS and benchmark your gear:

    sudo apt-get install phoronix-test-suite

Run the benchmark:

    phoronix-test-suite default-benchmark openarena xonotic tesseract gputest unigine-valley

and then say yes when it asks you to submit your results to openbechmarking.org. Then grab a cup of coffee, it takes a bit for the benchmarks to run. Depending on the version of Ubuntu you're using it might preferable for you to grabs PTS from upstream directly: http://www.phoronix-test-suite.com/?k=downloads

## Share your results with the community:

Post a link to your results (or any other feedback to): https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers-testers

Remember to rerun and resubmit the benchmarks after driver upgrades, this will allow us to gather a bunch of data on performance that we can share with everybody.

If you run into old documentation referring to other PPAs, you can help us by consolidating references to this PPA.

If someone wants to go ahead and start prototyping on `software-properties-gtk` on what the GUI should look like, please start hacking!

## Help us Help You!

We use the donation funds to get the developers hardware to test and upload these drivers, please consider donating to the "community" slider on the donation page if you're loving this PPA:

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/contribute
 More info: https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa
Press [ENTER] to continue or ctrl-c to cancel adding it

Be advised there are instructions on Nvidia site about disadvantages of upgrading Debian (which Ubuntu is based on) versus clean install.

Also be advised Nvidia website might have special instructions for Haswell, however their current drivers use the same one from my lowly GT650M up to OP's GT760M but there can be all kinds of recommended changes in other areas of the system based on Intel CPU and/or systemd or Debian.

Also there are special circumstances like the OP where Integrated Graphics and Discrete Graphics aka "Hybrid Graphics" are built into the Motherboard.

The Nvidia website does talk about black screens that are common questions in A.U. (Ask Ubuntu) so it's a worthwhile visit for most reading the OP's question.

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