nVidia drivers on 15.04 kernel 3.19 stalling system load

all. I recently bombed my Zorin OS 9 system by unsuccessfully installing kernel 4.0 so I decided to go back to Ubuntu - which I haven't used since 10.04 - and am stumbling across some issues. First is when I boot. ACPI PPC Probe failed. Starting version 219 NVIDIA. Evem after I ran the troubleshooting steps here ACPI PPC PROBE I still get the error after purging all nVidia drivers, though it does eventually boot using the noveau driver. But therein lies a second problem. The second issue is I can't get Steam to star. It won't launch at all from the GUI and when I try to open from terminal I get the following errors:

lerner@ubuntu15:~$ steam
Running Steam on ubuntu 15.04 32-bit
STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1428965940)
libGL error: unable to load driver: nouveau_dri.so
libGL error: driver pointer missing
libGL error: failed to load driver: nouveau
libGL error: unable to load driver: swrast_dri.so
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast

I've tried the answer here and while it works there's a ton of artifacts on my system when I attempt to play a game. What would be causing the crash between nVidia, Steam,and 15.04 on kernel 3.19? I would really like my system to have the proprietary nVidia drivers as it runs significantly better.

System setup: E5300 Dual Core at 2.6GHz, 4GB RAM, 25GB Swap, 1GB GeForce 610 GT

Edit: tried to launch BioShock Infinite which I can play with nVidia drivers and it crashed hard

Solution 1:

Figured it out on my own, guys.

First, assuming your system can actually boot into Ubuntu you'll want to open up a terminal and install kernel version 4.0 as follows. Please note that if you're using a 64 bit version at the end of the wget command you'll want to change that to _amd64.deb

$ wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.0-vivid/linux-headers-4.0.0-040000_4.0.0-040000.201504121935_all.deb

$ wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.0-vivid/linux-headers-4.0.0-040000-generic_4.0.0-040000.201504121935_i386.deb

$ wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.0-vivid/linux-image-4.0.0-040000-generic_4.0.0-040000.201504121935_i386.deb

sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-4.0.0*.deb linux-image-4.0.0*.deb

sudo reboot

From there what you want to do (and be patient, it takes a bit for the first time to load after installing 4.0) is open another terminal and do the following. My preferred driver of choice that works best with my card is nVidia-346 but insert your version where I put my 346

sudo apt-get install nvidia-346
sudo reboot

Again, it may take a bit for it to start, but besides the strange Starting version 219 (which I think I read has to do with the systemd version, could be wrong) your Ubuntu system should boot without issue, as well as Steam starting. I was quite pleased when BioShock Infinite started back up.

Cheers