linux is better than windoze or mac

nvidia driver 390.141

How do i get something more recent?

Linux 5.4.0-70-generic x86_64

The nvidia driver is here.

Unfortunately it's a .run file not .deb. You can find instructions about .run files here.

Looking back over your posts Paul, gives me the impression you may have suffered a glitch either during the download, the image burn or possibly the installation. Did you check the SHA size and security algorithms, yours from your download against the one posted on the download page for the .iso you downloaded? If they are identical, then your download is good. Give it a shot with another installation from that image. If they're not identical, BINGO! Problem is found. Re-download, recheck the algorithm, reburn and reinstall.
What's the age of your laptop? The Linux kernel does on occasion deprecate drivers for very old equipment, but it has to be actually ancient before Linux does this. There are two things I recommend to do with every fresh install that I haven't seen prompted for automatically after the first restart. One is to enable the firewall. That can be done either from the firewall GUI or in the Terminal with 'sudo ufw enable'. ufw = Unified Fire Wall. For desktops that's enough. The firewall is enabled with default settings and it'll initiate on every boot. You can check the firewall on occasion with 'sudo ufw status'. Second is to go to System Settings and then System Reports. Somewhere under the Reports popup you'll see a button that says something like 'Upload Report'. That shoots your system info, hardware info and a few other details to Linux which helps the developers know what equipment is used, what build is used and a bit more useful info. If everyone would do this the Linux Foundation would have a much better idea of how many users and pieces of equipment are 'out there' using Linux. It would also let them know how old the equipment is and give them a much more accurate set of numbers to work with. Oh, there's a third very important thing you really must do. Whenever someone gives you a command to use, make sure you know what that command actually does. Run it through a web search. That'll tell you what the command will do to your equipment plus it'll tell you if the person who gave it to you make a typo. Some typos can be disastrous.
The web search is your friend as well as getting familiar with using the builtin manual in Linux. Learn to use the 'man' command, short for manual. It's simple. It's just 'man command' such as 'man sudo' will tell you almost everything there is to know about the sudo command. You could also do 'man xrandr' to see what all the xrandr command can do. You are web searching to make sure I'm not giving you something that'll trash your system, right?

downloaded
chmod
./

denied - must be run as root.

sudo

seems to be bitchy that i am currently using the graphics system.  

gonna try a reboot.

it has to wait.  i have some time senstive windows open (for the kickstarter - about to send an update).

kinda feeling a bit like steve at the end of this video.



or this

I bounced my computer.  All the same.  

So I guess i need to do something with cinnamon shut down in order to run the .run thing?  How do I do that?

Blaine,

My computer is  ...

Lenovo ThinkPad W541 15.6-inch i7-4710MQ 32GB 1TB SSD NVIDIA Quadro K1100M 2GB Full HD Blu-Ray

From May 2015.

Firewall is now on.

...  the reason i moved to mint is because it just works and i don't have to think about it.   If not for my other reason to upgrade, i would just keep plugging along with 18.3  and might go three more years without upgrading.  All this stuff I am experiencing with the monitor dredges up old, dark memories of why I used and yet avoided linux as my primary workstation o/s.  Mostly, i just have a thousand other things i need to do and don't have time for this tinkering.  It's not my thing.  

If linux is super simple and just plain works, then i want everybody to choose it.  But when this sort of thing happens, it really puts me off my feed.

If you have a spare USB to test, you could try downloading another distribution and run it off the usb to confirm the drivers detect your hardware correctly. I've tried a couple different distributions, originally my focus was on gaming but I've found it simpler to go with Ubuntu and then add bits as needed, and my gaming interests have shifted over the years too.

https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/create-a-usb-stick-on-ubuntu#1-overview has the Ubuntu steps for their bootable USB, Mint and others have the same. You can use Etcher or Startup Disk Creator to make a bootable usb, or the MultiBootUSB utility to try multiple distro options. As someone who knows a little about Linux but nowhere near a pro level, I'd personally recommend Ubuntu to try out, or perhaps search "linux driver support 2021 NVIDIA Quadro K1100M" to see if there are reports of known-good release combos of the NVIDIA drivers and this version of Mint or another. Maybe a slightly older NVIDIA driver works best, and that could be simpler to install than a different kernel or different OS.

Linux is a breeze IF (big if) it recognizes everything properly, that is, you have the right drivers in your distro.

You can check if your distro has them. Write the name of your gpu and ask google about its linux compatibility, there are a couple of webpages that keep track of such things. It will tell you which linux version is reported to work properly, with propietary and non propietary drivers. If the driver is working fine, then it can be a bug in the distro you downloaded, which usually can be solved manually editing files, or using console commands. These bugs, if reported, are usually solved in next bugfixing release. Also, I still think that when linux can't detect something, it's usually a driver problem.

Things to try, in order of difficulty:
1. Update the software, in case there's a bugfixing release. Mint has a software update utility, I believe. However, if you installed from a fresh batch, there won't be much to update.
2. Check your hardware for linux compatibility online. Some hardware is reported to not work well. But you already know that your graphic card and monitor worked well with an old version.
3. If the problem arised after a system upgrade, then downgrade the linux kernel. You can keep all the other applications updated, but you have to come back to the old set of kernel drivers. As I said, this is very easy to do, just install a package called 'linuxXX', where XX is the version you had before (in my case, I'm stuck with linux44 or my laptop won't work). When you have more than one kernel installed, grub will ask you which one you want to use on boot.
4. If none of the above, make a query to the Mint support forum, or Google your problem to see if any of the solutions you can apply.
5. If too busy to do any of the above, just try another distro. Manjaro works well for me (after removing the package 'latest-linux' who forces kernel upgrades), but you might like Ubuntu LTS better. I didn't find many differences in daily use. Ubuntu has a more professional support, while Manjaro (and Arch) has great online guides and community support. Real professional support is for the licensed distros, like SUSE and RedHat, which you can find installed in universities.
However, if it's a kernel issue, probably changing to another distro won't solve anything, as they all would provide the newest shinniest kernels.

To Mark Brunnr and Abraham Palma

Could we please stop talking high level ideas and actually solve the problem please? This is one of the reasons people dread talking to the IT department, too many techs want to show of thier philosophy instead of just fixing the problem, on that note.

Umm, Mint is Ubuntu in a nicer coat. Changing Ubuntu version isn't going to change the fact that the were problems with the new Kernel and the old Nvidia driver.

The new Kernel and new Nvidia driver work together see here and here.



Paul, if you get into your boot loader you should see an option to boot into the terminal.

Getting into that may look different on different machine depending on which boot loader you using and if you're dual booting.

You can attempt it from a normal boot by:
 exiting cinnamon using CTRL + ALT + F1
 Kill X server with sudo /etc/init.d/lightdm stop
 Install the driver using 'cd' and 'ls' to navigate to the folder
 restart X server with sudo /etc/init.d/lightdm start

I don't recommend this method as it may not close everything associated with X and may give you further config problems, if you can you should startup in command line mode.

Paul, I also recommend the Mint forums for Mint problems. Clem, the main developer is pretty active there and the community is probably more versed in the most recent development issues.

Each distro's forum tends to be the best support system (outside of professional support for things like Ubuntu or Redhat)

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewforum.php?f=59

Lew Johnson wrote:Paul, I also recommend the Mint forums for Mint problems. Clem, the main developer is pretty active there and the community is probably more versed in the most recent development issues.

Each distro's forum tends to be the best support system (outside of professional support for things like Ubuntu or Redhat)

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewforum.php?f=59

almost there:  https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=346767&p=1998558

paul wheaton wrote:

Lew Johnson wrote:Paul, I also recommend the Mint forums for Mint problems. Clem, the main developer is pretty active there and the community is probably more versed in the most recent development issues.

Each distro's forum tends to be the best support system (outside of professional support for things like Ubuntu or Redhat)

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewforum.php?f=59

almost there:  https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=346767&p=1998558

Paul,    Probably low priority at the moment, but did you ever resolve this issue with your Linux Mint video driver fix?  I'm just curious as to the 'level of difficulty' you would rate the issue and its resolution for those dabbling around the edges of the Linux world.  Did the community help allow you to arrive at a solution?  Thanks!

Fixed.

I think that once I had the info, it was pretty easy.  The hard part (99% of the job) was getting the info.