I have an old laptop with an NVIDIA 820M graphics card, and I'm struggling to get it to work properly. I'm currently using Linux Mint 22.1, but whenever I try to install either the 390 or 340 drivers, my system gets stuck in a never-ending boot loop. I've also attempted to use the Nouveau driver, but that hasn't worked either. Any advice on how to solve this issue?
2 Answers
It can be tricky with older drivers since they often become incompatible with newer Linux distributions due to kernel updates. I would recommend trying Ubuntu 20.04, as it’s a bit older and should be more stable for the 390 drivers. While Ubuntu has moved on, you can still get security updates for a bit longer with Ubuntu Pro after the end of life.
Nouveau is actually the default driver that's built into the Linux kernel, so you don't need to install it separately. For the 820M, the 390 driver should be compatible, but first, make sure you have Secure Boot disabled in your BIOS settings. Also, you might want to add 'nouveau.noaccel=1' to your kernel parameters to help stabilize things. You can check out the boot options documentation for more details.
Related Questions
Lenovo Thinkpad Stuck In Update Loop Install FilterDriverU2_Reload