Hi Trevor, please describe specifically how you attempted to install the nvidia driver, i.e. which commands you utilized, and please describe the desktop environment, you are attempting to use with nvidia, as well as your kernel version shown by uname -a
It’s a common issue that the driver and kernel provided by debian/ubuntu do not work together, for a few different reasons. Generally the kernel updates, and the driver doesn’t, and so people installing on a tuesday, will get a broken nvidia install, and everyone else that had already installed everything the previous week have everything working.
This is why, for me personally I started managing my own kernel, and nvidia driver outside of apt, a year ago, and have never had problems with it since.
I did not read your bug report log, but if you provide the general information I outlined above, we can help you get the driver working quickly.
You generally want to follow instructions for making things work on linux, as opposed to merely attempting to use the prescribed methods by distributions, especially when it comes to graphics drivers.
There is a fair amount of complexity involved here. For ubuntu, sometimes you can rely on the software manager gui, and use the drivers menu, to install the nvidia driver appropriately, but sometimes these are incompatible with the currently installed kernel, and they will not work.
Here’s instructions I just looked up for you,
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y nvidia-driver-550
I’m surprised you got ubuntu to even boot with nvidia honestly, since it defaults to wayland, on the default installation cd, and gnome, you must actually use nomodeset on the kernel command line to even get the live cd installer to work, and then append it again after installation, in order to boot ubuntu for the first time, and then figure out how to install the nvidia driver, in order to use your system normally, with your graphics card.(which even includes learning how to change your display server from wayland, to X11 O.O )
(unless you chose to use one of the alternate desktop environment versions of ubuntu)
It might actually be the case, now that I have reminded myself of all the relevant problems to the experience you are having, that simply switching display servers from wayland to X11, will suddenly, let the nvidia driver start working normally.
It is often times the case, that the nvidia driver can fail to work, while we use the wayland display server, and the workarounds, reasons for this situation, differ based on all the different versions of the whole compilation of system components you have.
The best solution, for users of the nvidia graphics card, is to log out of your desktop environment, to the login menu, and click the options menu to switch to X11, instead of wayland, that option for you might look like a choice between gnome on wayland, and gnome, and in that case X11 would the gnome option.
After you have chosen x11 as your display server of choice, and logged in, that will be the default for you, and you can finally use your computer with the nvidia graphics card/driver normally.
Also if you want to get it working with wayland, we can give you instructions to do that too. You basically need people that understand what is happening, and have experience with all of these issues I’ve outlined above for example, to actually fix these problems.
Also, since you are speaking with a real human being, if you have any other questions at all, now would be the time to ask them.