nvidia drivers for MSI GS60 6QE-023FR with GeForceGTX 970M

Hi all,

A few months ago, I bought a new computer, the MSI GS60 6QE-023FR Ghost Pro with windows 10, and I was able to install ubuntu 15.10 after some tweaking.

I was able to boot and lauch the install with the nomodeset keel option. The wifi didn’t work at first but an apt-get update && upgrade fixed it.

I have 2 drives, and installed both OS on the same flash drive, and my home and swap are on the 2nd drive.

I am able to boot to ubuntu, but I have big troubles with the graphics and my nvidia graphic card. My objective is being able to use it for intensive numerical computations. The card is a GeForce GTX 970M.

Right now, when I install the nvidia driver, I can’t lauch Unity, I get sent back to the login screen. I tried installing other desktops. I usually like to use Cinammon, but it keeps falling back to a safe mode. I can only have a decent working environement with Gnome and Metacity. Gnome alone send me back to the login screen as Unity does.

Now when I’m on Gnome (Metacity), the first thing I see is a dialog box with the following message :

none of the selected modes were compatible with the possible modes:
Trying modes for CRTC 623
CRTC 623: trying mode 1920x1080@0Hz with output at 800x600@75Hz (pass 0)
CRTC 623: trying mode 1920x1080@0Hz with output at 800x600@75Hz (pass 1)

As a bonus, my battery life is extremely low on ubuntu, with only 1h instead of 3h on windows when I’m doing nothing.

I was hoping that the new ubuntu would solve my problems but it didn’t change a thing. I did an update to 16.04 but I’m still with the same problems.

I also tried some boot options that i found elsewhere, like i915.preliminary_hw_support=1, but I didn’t help.

I would like a real scientific method to make everything work, and not voodoo tricks. And for that, I need some guidance to understand how everything works, where are the informations I need to make right choices, or at least educated guesses, and expert advices on graphics.

If possible, I would like not to go through the process of reinstalling everything and doing random stuffs, like this guy did : http://askubuntu.com/questions/69267...n-msi-ge62-6qf

So where do I start ?

As I’ve seen people using these commands, here they are with there outputs :

> ubuntu-drivers devices
== cpu-microcode.py ==

driver : intel-microcode - third-party non-free

== /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.0 ==
vendor : NVIDIA Corporation
modalias : pci:v000010DEd000013D8sv00001462sd00001158bc03sc02 i00
model: GM204M [GeForce GTX 970M]
driver : xserver-xorg-video-nouveau - distro free builtin
driver : nvidia-361 - third-party non-free recommended

> dkms status
bbswitch, 0.8, 4.4.0-21-generic, x86_64: installed

nvidia-361, 361.42, 4.4.0-21-generic, x86_64: installed

With all my love