To Update, Or Not To Update (nVidia Drivers Missing!) SOLVED

[Mastodonian]

Now that I'm settled into my 3.4 install and so far haven't had too many problems (most are related to Compiz and not being able to get the right nVidia drivers). While I know Xanoyoshi has said before to never update beyond the typical Sudo apt-get update, but what about security updates? How is it a LTS if you can't get security updates when they're avilable? It's probably the "Mintyness" in me, but I feel a bit apprehensive not having to update every time an update is ready.

When I went through the software sources in the Software Center there is an option to disable all updates but security ones. Would it be safe to run the updates then?

Another big problem is that I can no longer access any other Nvidia drivers besides the experimental ones. This is causing a lot of conflicts with certain games (Dota2 mostly, and probably compiz). Instead of having four options in the menu all I'm left is nvidia_experimental_304 and Experimental NVIDIA binary Xorg Driver, kernel module and VDPAU library. It solved my problem of having the screen locked into a crappy resolution, but not having the reccomended drivers is still causing a lot of problems. How can I get these drivers back?

[ryanvade]

I think that Security updates are normally included with apt-get upgrade. I normally only see Kernel updates require apt-get dist-upgrade.

As for the Nvidia issue. You don't have xorg-edgers or any other experimental repo enabled do you? Have you checked in Synaptic for the stable nvidia drivers? Frankly the experimental drivers give better performance than the older (more stable) 304 line. I recommend using at least 319. They are stable. I am not sure why the 304 is considered experimental.. it is VERY old. 319 is the current stable, at least from Nvidia. Have you run apt-get update to refresh the list of drivers? apt-get update is normally safe, it just CHECKS for updates. It is apt-get upgrade and apt-get dist-upgrade you have to worry about.

[Mastodonian]

I've tried running apt-get update several times. I even tried messing with the software sources a little bit to see if that would work. I haven't tried checking Synaptic though, since I'm so used to having the drivers there by default. If I ever had this problem in the past it was solved by running the updates, which I don't know is safe with this version.

[Mastodonian]

Anytime I go into the update menu half the time it will show a pop up saying it needs to run a partial upgrade instead of a full. Is this normal? I've decided to put off updating until I can verify it won't blow up anything.

[tanmay.01]

Put up a screenshot of synaptic package manager which shows partial upgrade.

Sent from my Nexus 4

[Mastodonian]

Alright, here's the screen shot. I don't know if I posted it right (I've never done something like this before), but here it is.

I can remember when I used 3.5 and after I immedately updated it seemed to solve the missing driver problem, although I don't remember if it caused any other problems. I specifically remember lacking the normal reccomended driver at first.

I'm also getting a lot of lag when I wobble my windows with Compiz. I assume this is because I'm being forced to use very old drivers since I've never had this problem at all in the past.


EDIT: Forgot to mention. I normally have somewhere around 950 updates listed. I have 400 in this image because I was originally just going to do the security updates until this happened. The same pop-up happened with 3.4 Lite. It hasn't happened with any other Ubuntu distro, including 3.5 if I remember correctly.

Screenshot

[pam]

Hardware specifications please...

[tanmay.01]

With those many, its hard to tell. TheeMahn customises everything. And since the distro uses ubuntu's repo's. If ubuntu pushes a evil update, its gonna break your system.

I would suggest you to use Clonezillato clone your system. Then upgrade your system. If it breaks, you can roll back to the last state as it is.

[Mastodonian]

Well, I ran the updates and everything was perfectly fine. Even the Nvidia drivers showed up and I went ahead and updated to the most recent ones. But when I restarted after the Nvidia update it will only boot into a text mode. All I see is tty1 Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Login:.

Is there any way to get it to boot into the GUI again? I tried nomodeset and nothing happened. This seems so odd. I did exactly what I did when I was on 3.5 and nothing happened that time around. From what I've read it seems to be a problem with Ubuntu itself.


Nvidia GTX 580 GPU
Intel i7 processor, Eight cores
Hard Drive: Twin 1TB hard drives. I have Windows installed on my main and whatever Linux installation I'm using on my second.
Ethernet: Realtek, If I'm thinking of the right thing.
8 GB ram.
I have an Asus motherboard and BIOS, but I can't remember the specific one it is.

[pam]

Now i think you'd probably need to install the proprietary drivers.
I think now nouveau has been blacklisted...
http://www.nvidia.com/drivers

If you dont know how to install...ask.