My situation:
Im fairly new to PureOS, having it used for the past 3 months.
I’m using PureOS 10 (Bizantium I guess) and I tried in several occasions to install the NVidia drivers.
Last time I tried, it seem successfully but it doesnt boot up.
It hangs after showing the PureOS logo.
Im guessing there is a safe mode/console/text mode I can enter to revert those changes, but Im not sure how. Please could someone guide?
I havent found it in the internet but my instincts tell me there must be some way.
Thanks.
Newbie2
PD: I forgot to specify that my install is not on Purism laptop (if it wasnt clear from the context)
I might be wrong about this, but on most linux distros:
F12 during the OS splash screen flips to a technical printout of whats happening or stalling
CTRL+ALT+F1, or CTRL+ALT+F2 or other function keys up to usually F6 or so will switch between consoles. One of them will have the default GUI of your system that you can switch back to but the rest will be consoles you can use as recovery consoles typically
As a note, the proprietary version of the nvidia drivers is not likely to be supported on a libre focused distro like PureOS. If you just want something that works and don’t care about your personal freedom, it might be easier to try a different distribution if nouveau is not working on your hardware.
Thanks for the response!
I did not know about F12 and it works. However it cleans the screen and I thing the last item is “starting gnome”
Ive tried CTRL+ALT+F1 and all, but Im not getting a prompt, sadly.
Regarding your comment, I know you are philosophically 100% right. I wanted to check if I can make it work with PureOS, and I might reconsider it in the future. I had no need for propietary soft until now. I was able to install the debian ones, from the non free repository but the drivers were REALLY old and they didnt work as expected.
Is there any way I could recompile the kernel from “outside”, while booting from a USB? Problem is that I dont have a PureOS USB on me and I have to prepare it…
Iam also open to any ideas.
Thanks for the help again!
The key to press during boot (like F12) depends on the firmware (the BIOS) - not on the operating system - and that in turn could depend on what hardware you have. You can use this approach to boot from a known good USB flash drive and try to repair things.
However if you have borked the GUI (such as with the wrong video drivers) then, as @Dlonk says, the best thing is to switch to the console (login prompt) and from there you can login (shell prompt) and from there you can install / reinstall video drivers. (In general, this would be preferred as an approach to unborking, as compared with booting from a known good USB flash drive.)
If you have enabled an SSH server then there is some chance that you can ssh in from another computer and fix things that way.
On boot press and hold shift to get the Grub boot menu. Then choose the alternative boot options which is the second line in the boot menu. Then choose the recovery kernel on the submenu.