Ubuntu running in Low Graphics mode

During bootup are you given a menu with an option that has "Recovery Mode" or something like that at the end? It's a very handy tool and worth exploring. When you chose that option at bootup you get a second menu with useful things on it but it'll try to default into going back to a normal bootup.

There have been a number of questions about this lately and some of the answers from other people have been superb. It's worth hunting around for questions that have been solved.

Ooops, i thought i had bookmarked my favourite but it's gone.
Good luck and happy hunting
Regards from
Tom :)

Thanks Tom, I tried Recovery Mode but didn't get anywhere. First off, I tried the option for mending broken packages and when that didn't work I tried the last option (the one about re setting the X-server) and that didn't help either. Finally I took the first option which is to boot normally and still got the message about booting in low-graphics mode. I am now getting another message which says:

"You do not appear to be using the NVIDIA X driver. Please edit your X configuration file (just run 'nvidia-xconfig' as root) and re-start the x-server"

I have done that by opening a terminal and typing 'sudo nvidia-xconfig' and then re-booting but it hasn't cleared the problem - I just get the message (above) about not using the X driver again. The other problem is that if I edit the file manually, I have no idea what it is called or what to put in it regarding this NVIDIA driver. As I said before, I ran Update Manager yesterday and the Nvidia driver has been working fine for several weeks until today when I rebooted. Presumably today's problem is something to do with what was downloaded yesterday?

Hi Chris.

My desktop computer is also equipped with a NDIVIA graphics card. When I tried to upgrade to Ubuntu 8.10 (I'm currently running 8.04) I got a warning pop-up window saying that there is no NDIVIA controller working properly in 8.10, and gave me the chance of canceling the upgrade process, and of course that's what I did indeed.

I don't know further details, but I would suggest you to install Ubuntu 8.04 LTS instead of 8.10.

Good luck,

--Bixejo

Hi Bixejo,

Thanks for the information. I wondered what the problem was because I installed 8.1 on another computer which has a more recent NVIDIA card and when I selected "Hardware Drivers" in "System/Administration/" and selected the "recommended" NVIDIA driver I was unable to boot the machine afterwards. All I got was a command line which I couldn't do anything with so I ended up re-installing Ubuntu and not using the recommended NVIDIA driver.

With this machine, I selected "Hardware drivers" and deactivated the NVIDIA one that had been working until a couple of days ago and now the machine boots without giving an error message. However, I no longer get some of the effects that I got with the NVIDIA driver and the desktop is slightly too big for the screen. Presumably the Ubuntu developers are aware of this problem and will rectify it some time. If you are interested, there is an article on the NVIDIA web site about installing drivers in Linux but it is way beyond my comprehension

Thanks again

Chris

Thanks bixejo, that solved my question.

lol, it's 8.10 as in the release date backwards
2008 October

It was ages before i found out too
Good luck and have fun
Regards from
Tom :)