Ubuntu not starting GUI after install

Question

Just installed Ubuntu on my Dell Precision 3591 and, after installing it, the GUI won't start. 

I have Ubuntu 22.04 with the 6.5.0-28-generic kernel.

I understand this might be a problem with the graphics drivers, I have the Nvidia 550 driver installed.

Debugging steps I’ve tried:

• reinstall Nvidia drivers
• reinstall gnome-core, gnome-shell, gnome-session
• reinstall ubuntu-desktop
• running startx manually; failed with: vesa: Refusing to run on UEFI and Fatal server error: cannot run in framebuffer mode.  Please specify busIDs for all framebuffer devises (both errors on the same run).
• running the automated checks of recovery mode – all finished fine

Nothing I do seems to change this state at this point.

I'm really lost and would appreciate some help.

Answer 1

Apparently there is an issue with the graphics driver, GPU(RTX A2000) and Kernel combo

I'm not sure exactly where the problem is but there are 2 solutions

Option 1:

Revert to an older driver (untested but should work)

using the 535 driver is supposed to work fine without any issues.

Run those lines to install the older driver

sudo apt remove nvidia-dkms-550 #remove the old driver
sudo apt autoremove #clean up remaining junk files
sudo apt install nvidia-dkms-535 #install the new driver
sudo reboot #for the changes to take effect

Option 2:

Update the laptop to a newer Ubuntu version (the solution I used)

Make a boot drive for Ubuntu 24.04 (latest at the time of writing this) you can follow the instructions here https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop

boot from the drive and install the new Linux version

(I'm pretty sure you can upgrade the Linux version without reinstalling it all but since I was setting up a new workstation and had nothing on it yet this was the fastest solution for me)

hope this helps :)