Recent Nvidia drivers (418 and above) are not working on GTX 1660
I'm running Ubuntu 20.04 (5.4.0-74-generic kernel) and I'm having a problems with Nvidia's drivers. I have an Nvidia GTX 1660 video card and some of the drivers aren't working, my monitor never gets a signal and just stays turned off. I was able to fix the problem by downgrading to the open source (Nouveau) driver. In the "Additional Drivers" tab on the Software & Updates application there are several drivers available so I tested each one and got the following results....
Does not work:
Nvida driver metapackage nvidia-driver-460 (proprietary, tested)
Nvida driver metapackage nvidia-driver-465 (proprietary)
Works:
Nvida Server driver metapackage nvidia-driver-418-server (proprietary)
X.Org X Server -- Nouveau display driver from xserver-xorg-video-nouveau (open source)
So the only options for me are to use the 418 server driver or the open source driver. My question is; How come the more recent version of Nvidia's drivers aren't working? Is there a configuration setting I'm missing?
EDIT: Solved it (kind of). The dmesg showed this error
kernel: BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000020
Which many linux users are getting when they updated their Nvidia drivers to 455.23.04 and above (the issue still isn't fixed). I installed driver 450.80.02 and the issue was solved. If I update to 455.23.04 and above the issued comes back. The problem is being discussed on Nvidia's help forum here: https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/bug-report-455-23-04-kernel-panic-due-to-null-pointer-dereference/155506
The older versions of the proprietary Nvidia graphics driver are included in the default Ubuntu repositories so users can install them if the newer drivers don't work. Trying the available Nvidia driver versions until you find a version that works for you is all you can do in some situations. There is no magic configuration that makes a non-working Nvidia driver version work, and no magic reason that explains why a particular Nvidia driver version doesn't work for everyone either.