Installed by ubuntu-drivers for unsupported GPU (GTS 450)

[Chris Warrick]

Clean install of Kubuntu 20.04, with the "install proprietary drivers" option checked. System didn't go past boot screen. Further checks suggested that there is no working graphics driver compatible with SDDM/KDE (XDM would start using VESA).

$ lspci -nn
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GF116 [GeForce GTS 450 Rev. 2] [10de:1245] (rev a1)
$ ubuntu-drivers devices
== /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/0000:01:00.0 ==
modalias : pci:v000010DEd00001245sv00001458sd00003523bc03sc00i00
vendor : NVIDIA Corporation
model : GF116 [GeForce GTS 450 Rev. 2]
driver : nvidia-driver-435 - distro non-free
driver : nvidia-driver-390 - distro non-free
driver : nvidia-340 - distro non-free
driver : nvidia-driver-440 - distro non-free recommended
driver : xserver-xorg-video-nouveau - distro free builtin

The modalias appears in apt show nvidia-driver-440. This is incorrect, this GPU is not supported by the 440 driver. I manually switched to 390 (which is listed as supported by Nvidia) and that works. This is also seen in the support list (/usr/share/doc/nvidia-driver-440/README.txt.gz).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: nvidia-driver-440 (not installed)
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-39.43-generic 5.4.41
Uname: Linux 5.4.0-39-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.3
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CurrentDesktop: KDE
Date: Sat Jun 27 13:19:14 2020
InstallationDate: Installed on 2020-06-25 (1 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 20.04 LTS "Focal Fossa" - Release amd64 (20200423)
SourcePackage: nvidia-graphics-drivers-440
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Daniel Letzeisen (dtl131)]

Probably a duplicate of or related to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-drivers-common/+bug/1874874