When running the latest nvidia drivers 470.57.02 on Ubuntu 20.04 with GDM3 as display manager with optimus enabled it is unable to boot and show the login screen. I tried a few things and no matter if I used ssdm, lightdm or gdm3 non wanted to boot and showed different issues.
- When using lightdm display manager it is stuck at the following boot step: “Staring show plymouth boot screen”
- When using gdm3 display manager it is stuck on the ubuntu launch screen never reaching the login screen with no output.
The fix for lightdm was to connect an external display then suddenly it would boot on that external monitor while still displaying the same message on my laptop screen.
For gdm3 it turned out I had to disable optimus (hybrid) graphics in the bios and only use the dedicated graphics card. Besides this I also had to ensure the nouveau drivers where completely disabled.
Now I couldn’t directly find other people experiencing the exact same behavior as such I’m writing this topic. In the hope Nvidia is able to fix these issues. Or find someone else who is also experiencing it and found a solution to make it work with Optimus.
Some more information:
Nvidia driver: 470.57.02
Display manager: GDM3 - on X.Org
Ubuntu 20.04 - kernel version 5.11.0-7620-generic
Graphics card: Quadro P1000
Lenovo thinkpad P1
Bios version: 1.36