ubuntu-drivers no longer offers nvidia 550 drivers

[Jack Howarth]

While I am unclear which package update impacted the video drivers detected by ubuntu-drivers, the nvidia 545 and nvidia 550 video drivers are no longer shown as an option on NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 video card. I can understand the removal of the nvidia 545 drivers as the current kernel's linux-signatures-nvidia-6.8.0-28-generic package lacks signatures for the nvidia 545 kernel modules for secure boot but the nvidia 550 kernel modules signatures are available. So while it would be acceptable to downgrade the 'tested' default nvidia driver to 535, ubuntu-drivers and Additional Drivers should be offering the nvidia 550 drivers as an untested option.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Alexander (sturmlocke86)]

Agreed. I recently installed Ubuntu 23.10 after some absence and the first thing noted is the Nvidia drivers 535 are the default / tested version in the preinstalled driver tool app, and while that's fine, the newer version 550 is missing completely. Please add 550 both the proprietary and as open kernel module. IIRC on Ubuntu 22.04.4 version 550 open was available but only as a server edition (or was it 23.10?).

In addition, please make sure that switching between graphic drivers via the driver tool is safe. I say this because I was switching back and forth between Ubuntu LTS and 23.10 for testing purposes (separate hard drives), and the last time I switched to 545 via the driver tool app it showed me an error window without error message and wouldn't install. After a reboot Ubuntu just froze with a blinking cursor. Now I read what Jack posted above and understand why this is happening, but a normal user just wanting to switch drivers won't understand what's going on. This isn't the first time these things happen either.

GPU: Nvidia RTX A2000

[Alexander (sturmlocke86)]

Update: I just upgraded to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and still no 550 drivers available. Before upgrading to 24.04 I tried installing the driver version 545 on Ubuntu 23.10 via the driver tool and immediately got hit by a dependency error and at some point the installation just froze. I decided to install 24.04 freshly from scratch after this.

Nvidia driver installation really has to be worked on when installing via the additional drivers tool. It's lacking newer drivers and it's too unstable when doing anything above the tested driver set.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for the report, bug #2061830 might provider some context there

> Since 550 wasn't included in the beta we should limit the potential impact on 24.04 stability by limiting
> the driver to be loaded only on the new hw supported by this driver. This will be temporary until we are
> ready to migrate 535 to 550.

[Alexander (sturmlocke86)]

Thanks for the feedback, Sebastien. Question, I read that Nvidia has a new driver V555 in the works, which together with Gnome 46.1 will fix explicit sync issues under Wayland, resolving a number of outstanding glitches and bugs when gaming via Steam under wayland. When the time has come, will Ubuntu be offering that new version as well via the driver selection tool or will we stick to V550?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The new version will be listed in the tools once available and tested