Replacing nvidia with ATI video card

[jave808]

Hi,
I'm about to install a used HD7750 video card into my 2nd PC to replace a nvidia FX3500 card.  The PC runs Ubuntu 12.10 64-bit.  Do I need to uninstall the old nvidia drivers or can I just replace the old card with the new one and let the OS work it out?  If I need to uninstall the old drivers how do I do so?  Many thanks for all replies.  ;D
Jave.

[Dingo]

I am not an expert but maybe this will help.   I would get rid of the nvidea stuff first.

You should be able to use.

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sudo apt-cache search nvidea* to find out what packages are installed

If it returned the package  "nvidia-current", "nvidia-current-updates"
Then un-install them by using

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sudo apt-get remove nvidia-current-updates and sudo apt-get remove nvidia-current  etc

I use mainly Centos but these are the commands for Ubuntu

[jave808]

@Dingo: Cool, thanks for the info. Will look into it.

[jave808]

@Dingo:  Mate, the apt-get search returned a lot more than just the "current" drivers.  See text below.

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nvidia-173 - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module and VDPAU library
nvidia-173-updates - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module and VDPAU library
nvidia-173-updates-dev - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development files
nvidia-current - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module and VDPAU library
nvidia-current-updates - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module and VDPAU library
nvidia-current-updates-dev - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development files
nvidia-experimental-304 - Experimental NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module and VDPAU library
nvidia-experimental-304-dev - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development files
nvidia-settings-experimental-304 - Tool of configuring the NVIDIA graphics driver
nvidia-settings-updates - Tool for configuring the NVIDIA graphics driver
nvidia-173-dev - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development files
nvidia-current-dev - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development files

plus a whole heap more. Do I need to remove all of the above?

[dcarrion87]

I thought I'd have a look around the forum to see what's going on and stumbled on this. Thought I might be able to give my thoughts.

Depending on how aware the ATI drivers are, there's a good bet it will work it out. I believe when your system goes to probe nvidia cards for driver load it will just fail and the ATI one will load.

If you used "apt-get install" to install the drivers previously then this should give you a list of currently install nvidia drivers.

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dpkg --get-selections | grep nvidia

I believe apt-get search cache gives you everything you've previously "apt-get install" and haven't "apt-get remove --purge".

There's a few ways you can check what version you've got installed to match it with what gets returned above.

One way:

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daniel@kirk:~$ cat /proc/driver/nvidia/version
NVRM version: NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module  310.32  Mon Jan 14 14:41:13 PST 2013
GCC version:  gcc version 4.6.3 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.6.3-1ubuntu5)

Another:

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daniel@kirk:~$ modinfo nvidia | grep version
version:        310.32
vermagic:       3.2.0-36-generic SMP mod_unload modversions

You can then do your normal apt-get remove based on that. I'm guessing that you may just be using nvidia-current.

One thing to note. The version of X (window system) in Ubuntu 12.10 does not have a /etc/X11/xorg.conf file by default. It's meant to detect attached cards and drivers automatically. It then allows users to drive monitor configs etc... out of /home/<user>/.config/monitors.xml path (where display  settings get stored). If you have issues getting a display after installing your ATI card and driver, check to make sure there's nothing funky in the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and your /home/<user>/.config/monitors.xml that's NVIDIA specific. I believe "Xorg -configure" will let you make a new xorg.conf file, but I honestly don't believe you'll get to that point.

OK so basically after you remove the right NVIDIA driver this should return nothing (mine returns as I have NVIDIA driver installed):

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root@kirk:/lib/modules/3.2.0-36-generic# ls -l /lib/modules/*/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12706211 Jan 23 17:10 /lib/modules/3.2.0-36-generic/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia.ko


You should then be good to install your ATI driver. Honestly though, I don't see any problems with installing your ATI drivers on top. My understanding on the design is that you should be able to swap out or have both cards in at the same time if you want. You'd just need to do a manual xorg.conf file though if you wanted to do something crazy like that ;).

The only thing that concerns me is that some driver installs want to build the kernel driver for your platform. In this case you may need to install "linux-source" and "linux-headers-generic" before it attempts to do it's thing building the drivers, installing them and running update-initramfs. I really don't know ATI driver installation packages though, sorry.

This went on longer than I thought it would...Sorry about that. I hope this has been somewhat useful. I'll keep tabs on this post to see how you go. :)

Cheers

Daniel

[Dingo]

Daniel seems to know much more about it than I do so I would go with his way or a combination.  Let us know how you get along.    I use CEntos 6.3 64 bit as my Linux version and use a third party software for the drivers.   I do have one Ubuntu PC that currently has Nvidea GPU so I am interested in what you find out.

[Dingo]

@Daniel    Somehow I screwed up your post.  I thought I was replying to your post but when I saved it all the following was under your name instead of mine.  First time I have done that ??


Hey Dingo,

Just out of curiosity, what third party software to you use on CentOS for drivers?

Cheers

Daniel

I use Centos 6.3 as my web server for dingo-den.com and also running BOINC of course.  I use the el 6 drivers for most things but for Video drivers I use elrepo.org so would load the nvidea drivers HERE or for ATI drivers HERE.   They also tell you how to remove the drivers from nvidea by running a script

Notes for users who used Nvidia's binary installer
Users who have installed the driver by running the binary installer provided by Nvidia are advised to uninstall it before attempting to install kmod-nvidia. Run the same script that was used for the installation by adding a --uninstall flag. For example:

sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-185.18.36-pkg2.run --uninstall

I am not sure if you can run that on Ubuntu or not ?

[dcarrion87]

@Dingo

No worries. You're the forum boss, you can screw up any post you like. ;P.

Yeah you can run that command on Ubuntu as well if you used NVIDIA driver from their website to install. That is:

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sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-<version>-pkg2.run --uninstall

I actually do my install/uninstall this way as I don't like relying on Ubuntu's NVIDIA packages.

Probably best to use apt-get remove if he installed the driver using the package manager to begin with. End of the day both should end up wiping NVIDIA drivers clean.

Cool bananas re: your CentOS build for running dingo-den.com. I've spoken to a lot of people that use CentOS for their servers. We had a few of them where I used to work (before I started Uni), but I've mainly worked with Debian flavours and Solaris.

[WallyTheDog]

Jave,
All this can be done with jockey in ubuntu. It should have installed when you loaded ubuntu, by default. Do a search in your package manager if in doubt (muon or synaptic) and install it if its not there already, making sure that "Propretary Drivers" is ticked in your Software Sources. Jockey appears in the Start menu/application launcher under "system" as "additional drivers".

Jockey installs proprietarry drivers along with the kernel according to what hardware it finds at boot time (video, tv cards etc) These are the proprietary binarys issued by the manufacturers and not ubuntu alternatives. Install the new card and boot up, log in and look through the main menu, click on "additional drivers" and activate/deactivate as necessary. Ubuntu may go into fallback mode until you activate the driver. Wipe hands on pants.

[jave808]

@Daniel: Thanks for your input. Your first piece of code returned

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jave@jave-desktop:-$ dpkg --get-selections | grep nvidia
nvidia-common
nvidia-current
nvidia-settings

I then did some googling and came across this page:  http://askubuntu.com/questions/206283/how-can-i-uninstall-a-nvidia-driver-completely and then decided to remove nvidia-current and nvidia-settings ONLY. (As Daniel suggested I'd probably need to remove nvidia-current only.)

i.e.

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sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia-current
sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia-settings

I then shutdown and installed the HD7750 video card this afternoon.  Not sure what to do next I googled some more on how to install ATI drivers for Ubuntu. I decided to follow the instructions on this page - http://askubuntu.com/questions/124292/what-is-the-correct-way-to-install-ati-catalyst-video-drivers-fglrx.  And after installing the drivers and rebooting I (or should it be "they" as in the drivers?) managed to kill Unity (same as killing Explorer in Windows)!

I still had a desktop though and could access some menus.  So what to do?  Google again I guess.  I came across a solution here - http://askubuntu.com/questions/202752/unity-top-bar-side-bar-and-window-decorations-missing-after-upgrade-to-12-10.  Scroll down to the solution mentioning the HD7750 card (same as mine!).  I followed the instructions and now have a fully working desktop.  Plus Boinc is using the GPU to crunch WU's in WCG.  biggrin  Which what all this effort was for!!

Many thanks to all that replied. And to WallyTheDog, I will look into Jockey.  I've never heard of it before.

[dcarrion87]

@ jave200372, well done mate!

Careful with jockey-kde (additional drivers package). It has a tendency to crash and give you some strange driver installation results if you're not careful. In saying that, it is convenient when it works and most people love it. I moved away from jockey in favour of using proprietry installers as NVIDIA are doing regular release/fixes these days. The official proprietry drivers in Ubuntu repos seem to bug out now and then. I think a recent package didn't download source/headers before compile and installed a package that didn't end up installing any driver at all.  In saying that, the Ubuntu repo ones are supposed to be tested with the actual OS before releasing whereas the latest manufacturer releases aren't.

They got rid of Jockey by default in Ubuntu 12.10. As Wally mentioned, you need to to install/enable it (it's actually a package). If you are working, I suggest you don't install/enable it.

Eeekk, I hope I haven't upset anyone that swears by Jockey and Ubuntu repo drivers. It's just my opinion on it, that's all. Everyone has their opinions...right?

[jave808]

Update: All seemed to be going well until I discovered that I couldn't get my display back after the monitor had gone to sleep.  My screensaver kicks in after 5 minutes, the monitor goes to sleep about 10-15 minutes later.  I have the PC set to "Never suspend" (i.e. never go to sleep/hibernate).  So when I went to go and "wake up" the display by moving the mouse all I got was a blank screen. Grrrr....

So, not sure what to do next I decided to try and update the ATI drivers again following this guide - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/ATI. The guide talks about version 12.6 drivers but I successfully installed version 13.1 drivers from the AMD website (http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx).  And now my "wake up" problem seems to have been fixed. +1 for Jave, 0 for PC.  ;D

[dcarrion87]

+1 for persistence and patience. Well done!

[Dingo]

Glad you got it sorted out,  I am thinking of doing the same as I currently have a GTX 295 in my Linux server and have a HD5850 sitting in the drawer.  +1 as well from me