Comment 35 for bug 106217

I did indeed manually install the NVIDIA drivers... but only after the X system was completely broken. I used the built-in package update program (is it called aptitude??) to change drivers initially. Once done, I rebooted and X failed to come up. I tried to use 'dselect' to go back to the other driver, but this first off declared a lot of conflicts and eventually seemed to work. And yet X still didn't come up with a reboot. That's when I started casting about, eventually trying to install the drivers directly from nvidia (which still didn't help).

Concerning "update-initramfs -u":

I tried that and it didn't help (after a reboot, of course). So out of curiosity, I tried it again. It yielded a different file, but still didn't help (after a reboot). Out of curiosity, I tried it a third time. It yielded yet another file. After the next reboot, that kernel is now trash. Panics on the second line of startup. Luckily, I still have the -12 kernel that initially installed. I suppose this problem could be based on my nvidia problems, but I'm suspecting that there's something unwholesome about "update-initramfs" as well.

Oh! To answer the implicit question a while back, I got started on this whole "update nvidia" quest because the driver Ubuntu installed as part of the initial installation tended to crash on video mode switches. Especially going from X to a console login. It doesn't crash _every_ time, just often enough to be annoying. And when it crashes, lights flash on the keyboard and the system is dead. One time it even died when the screen blanker initiated.