As above switched to Linux and i am enjoying it i picked Ubuntu as TBH it was the first I came across. The last two times it has prompted me to update has caused a drama. First would only give me a black screen of text so I did a reinstall.

The latest one went fine it updated to 6.17.0-94 but i lost all networking no wifi By the looks of it the problem I have is i have an older device that has nvidia 580 graphics card. I have rolled back for now but questions are;

Is there a way to pre-emt this, as i feel now as soon as i restart it will jump back up and leave me without networking to resolve. its quite a faff trying to find out what to do on my mobile and typing it in the terminal.

Is it better to fix or try another distro?

  • tangeli@piefed.socialEnglish
    1·
    19 minutes ago

    You can boot Linux from a USB flash drive if your main installation isn’t working. That might be better than searching for solutions from your phone. And a bootable USB flash drive is helpful when you can’t boot from the internal drive. I always have one around, just in case, though I don’t use it very often.

    Booting from USB flash drive is a bit slow. A USB attached hard drive or SSD will be much faster or, if your internal drive is big enough, you can partition it to hold two Linux installations. Then, when one isn’t working you can switch to the other with just a reboot, as long as it’s not the boot loader that’s broken.

  • 0t79JeIfK01RHyzo@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    31 minutes ago

    The 580 drivers might just be the default for nvidia. I have two computers with nvidia GPUs that are like 10 years apart in age, but both look like they’re running 580 drivers.

    I don’t really know what’s wrong with the networking though. Maybe try updating from terminal if you haven’t? sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

  • mumblerfish@lemmy.world
    7·
    2 hours ago

    GTX 580? Maybe you have to install an older driver, like the 470-series of the driver appears to support it: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/unix/legacy-gpu/ Ubuntu has a bunch of older series of nvidia driver you can install for this purpose.

    That would not explain your networking though. Unless that is also some older hardware too… But, a common thing to do as a new user in linux may be to find posts which answer “how do I install x in ubuntu” and they usually involve editing files under /etc/apt/sources.d/. This can wreck your system in this kind of way, so: have you done that? Or this is pure ubuntu, just regular apt update/upgrade and some apt installs?

    • Cherry@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      2·
      2 hours ago

      Not altered anything just saw the pop up for update now…which i did and all looked to be fine, aside from the no networking.

      I tried the install extras option and that’s when i got the 580 errors. I might be wrong that they are the problem.

      • wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        11 minutes ago

        Also, do you NEED the Nvidia drivers? Are you gaming and trying to squeeze every last bit or is it just a display output? Cause if it’s the latter the open source nouveau drivers will work just fine with that card.

        • Cherry@piefed.socialOPEnglish
          1·
          2 hours ago

          I thought i completely removed windows when i did the install. I was mac in a previous life. I picked up a old pc that had a fresh install of windows and i thought i just installed linux straight over it…when it asked if i wanted to install over the full drive.

          I will try and find out…

          • Ulu-Mulu-no-die@lemmy.zipEnglish
            3·
            2 hours ago

            It doesn’t matter what you do on the hard drive, you need to go into the BIOS to disable fast boot.

            How to do that depends on your PC, search the web for your PC brand and model.

  • emotional_soup_88@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    2 hours ago

    I don’t know which network manager Ubuntu uses, so I’m not sure whether this applies to you. I’m using Arch with the network manager systemd-networkd. I set it up manually from the CLI by creating a so called .network file in the /etc/systemd/network/ folder.

    To “setup” and start using systemd-networkd, do sudo systemctl enable --now systemd-networkd.service. You will probably also need to setup systemd-resolved with sudo systemctl enable --now systemd-resolved.service because some services and/or programs need this for domain name resolution.

    Then, check out point 3.5 on this page in the Arch Wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd-networkd

    Use the section that applies to your setup depending on whether you are wired, wireless or both.

    This of course assumes that Ubuntu doesn’t use another network manager.

    • Cherry@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      2·
      2 hours ago

      That’s what i thought, it is good excuse to explore. I am just a bit frustrated as a new user to be bumping into roadblocks so early in my linux journey

      • VoiHyvaLuojaMitaNyt@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 hour ago

        I was on Ubuntu for like 3 years, a few days ago switched to Debian. I installed Ubuntu because I thought it would “easy” and “just works” and all that. I’m not very computery person, I know some basics but I’m mostly confused about everything.

        What I’ve learned from using Debian is I should have just gone for that from the beginning. Its not that different and somehow it feels nicer and more capable. If your Ubuntu keeps giving you grief, try Debian or whatever you think looks nice.

      • emotional_soup_88@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        2 hours ago

        The trade off is that you’ll have to get used to troubleshooting and configuring a bit on your own, but the reward is that you are no longer an involuntary product of Microslop. :) Don’t get discouraged, be patient!