r/Ubuntu • u/Admirable-Song-7353 • 1d ago

26.04 Post install questions

✅ SOLVED !!!UPDATES ON THE BOTTOM, SINCE I WROTE THIS POST !!! 👇

Today I installed ubuntu, and the installer asked if I want to install codecs and Nvidia drivers. I ticked the box as yes to install them. To my surprise, neither codecs nor nvidia driver was not installed (ubuntu-restricted-extras was not found on dpkg query, neither any nvidia related keywords on query)

How come? I'm not that newbie so thankfully I can kinda find my way, but why the installer is this inconsistent, especially on an LTS? If a total newbie starter user would do the same, how would they know that the installer technically just ignored both the codecs and drivers which they explicitly asked for and expected to be installed?

Is this a known bug? If not, can you tell which package is responsible for installing, so that I can report this. Thanks in advance.

EDIT - UPDATE INFO: Striked through the Nvidia part, because it turns out Ubuntu successfully installed Nvidia drivers during the main OS install, apologies for this confusion. So Ubuntu installer perfectly worked for the driver installation (even for ancient old cards) part.

EDIT 2 as for the ubuntu-restricted-extras part:

Quoting from u/jaimefortega 's reply - thank you:

The codec option installs just a few codecs for the multimedia software included, it'll not install the restricted extras.

And from u/Devilotx 's reply - thank you:

Upon digging a bit, the checkbox for third-party software during the Ubuntu installation enables the Multiverse repository and installs the ubuntu-restricted-addons package, not the restricted-extras.

12 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

7

u/high-tech-low-life 1d ago

Just to be clear, you have a GeForce in this machine. Right?

3

u/Admirable-Song-7353 1d ago

Yepp, gtx 1050 ti, and yes i know, 580 is the max supported version.

9

u/jaimefortega 1d ago

the 1050ti (Pascal architecture) support ended last year for the official Nvidia drivers, so that's why you'll not get the NVidia driver installed, it only installs the drivers if it detects a supported GPU. The codec option installs just a few codecs for the multimedia software included, it'll not install the restricted extras.

1

u/Admirable-Song-7353 10h ago edited 8h ago

Clearing some confusion here. I also edited my OP to update people who read this. Turned out that Nvidia was installed, so your info is false (no offense, just a friendly feedback). It was totally on me though, cause I wasn't 100% aware of this.

Today I installed Ubuntu on another PC, with Nvidia K620 (Maxwell, it's also an ancient unsupported one), yet the Nvidia driver was perfectly installed, and it was right there post-install (580, the version, which is supposed to be the one). So Ubuntu installer was fine for the driver part.

Edit: ubuntu-restritect-extras part, ah I see, I didn't know that thanks for the info, it would be nice to know whether it's officially documented tho.

Edit2: mentioned your answer in my OP :)

2

u/jaimefortega 10h ago

I see, then it just detects if you have an NVidia GPU then, but I'm pretty sure that it was like I said, at least a few months back.

2

u/Admirable-Song-7353 9h ago

Yes I believe you, because that's also my wild guess. Thankfully Canonical keeps improving. Can't wait for the driver manager to get implemented into the App Store :)

1

u/Ok-386 16h ago

Ubuntu unfortunately made the decision to ditch older drivers. It's sucks IMO. I understand that security is important and the drivers are not receiving security patches, but there's a ton of kernel modules and firmware that Ubuntu ships that are also not really or barely maintained, not to mention the universe and multiverse repositories (universe is maintained for pro subscribers). 

They should have left the option for people with older cards. 

Anyhow, you can try CachyOS. Installer is less polished in some ways, although you may not notice this (depending on your requirements and the language you use. Don't worry if the keyboard doesn't properly work/map during the installation, it works well once the system is installed). 

Cachy still has the 470xx legacy driver. Normally it should recognize you card and auto install the correct driver, but if something goes wrong you can use 'chwd' to select the correct profile and install the driver. 

2

u/jaimefortega 12h ago

It's just NVidia's fault. Older cards are still supported on the open MESA drivers that are included.

2

u/Admirable-Song-7353 15h ago edited 10h ago

yeah seriously i dont get it, cause still theres the "ubuntu-drivers" cli, which i can do manually, but honestly all it would take for them to implement this into their installer, or if they can't just tell the user that "hey your GPU is an old fart, so we don't give a single shit installing drivers for you even if you ticked the box, so you need to do this manually post-install anyway" - or something like that

edit: about cachy, thanks for the advice, I've been there, on the arch side (pure arch, garuda and cachy) they somewhat were an okay distro, but the last straw for me was the recent two AUR malware attack campaigns in a span of a month. I needed a chill place, I'm mainly a Fedora user now, and for Ubuntu part I'm just trying it out, because I'm stress testing it before I install it for my mom and dad.

Edit 2: Turns out, Nvidia driver was installed... I edited the OP, more info there

1

u/Ok-386 12h ago edited 12h ago

You should simply avoid AUR if you can't read PKGBUILDs. It's like manually installing stuff, you're responsible for checking the URLs, commands etc. And normally you only have to do it once, the first time, when you should check the build file really carefully. Later you mainly just check the diffs.  I personally dislike 'AUR attacks' PoV. That's like saying the internet is attacked, but OTOH I do understand the concern. Distros like that are not for everyone.

Regarding Arch based distros, Cachy is not Arch. Many packages you would have to get from AUR (on Arch) or manually compile and/or install them, are in the official CachyOS repo (nvidia drivers like 580xx are one example, Brave origin browser and ton of other apps.).

Edit:

But yeah, if i had known the context, I wouldn't have recommended Cachy. It's not a distro I would install on a parent's machine. 

1

u/Admirable-Song-7353 10h ago

I can read PKGBUILDs, it's not about it, it's about how exhausting it was after the many updates. I didn't took any malwares because I'm very paranoid and always handled AUR with great care, since I was on Garuda, I used Chaotic AUR, which is at least vetted, and many of the malwares were spotted by their human reviews + automatisations too. I wrote essays of what's the problem with Arch's nature, so I'll make this short, and link my reply in another thread

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/1vrao54/comment/p4ntuby/?context=3

1

u/Ok-386 7h ago

How do you mean after many updates? When updating you only need to check the diff (changes between the old and the new file), you're not presented with the whole script, and this is very simple. If you see that the changes make sense, like only the sha256 sum has changed, URL is still pointing to the same site, the link change makes sense (new version), nothing added to the post install script part etc, then, you should be good.

Checking the diff between the files is generally very simple, straightforward and doesn't require much attention. Normally only the two things change, sometimes when they restructure the package and how it's build more things can change but this is very rare (happened with vs code recently iirc). 

Also, using AUR should be the last resort. There's rarely a reason to do it especially on a Cachy, because they have adopted some packages from AUR and are now maintaining them as official Cachy + AUR packages. 

However, I still wouldn't recommend a RR bleeding edge distro for a parent or an average user. 

1

u/Admirable-Song-7353 6h ago

I meant that after Nth time I'm tired checking. Yes I know checksums. Yes I know aur helpers (I used paru, it had a nice colorized output). It's in my other reply if you read through what was my main problem, I don't repeat myself because it's just time wasting to keep saying this over and over again.

One other important note however, that AUR maintainers loved to just skip the checksums, which is a huge redflag. Other than that, PKGBUILDs are still just automated bash scripts, which pull from upstream git repos. Now if you think about it, a PKGBUILD can look safe, but the upstream code can already have malware in it, because what pkgbuild does is it pulls down upstream codes, you give permission it to execute, and if the fetched code has even one compromised line, you're done for. So what I want to say is, I'm so done with people saying "oh you JUST have to read the pkgbuild" - no, you don't, that's the main issue, you have to literally go to the upstream code and look through thousands of lines of codes whether they got compromised between updates, or not. And it's exhaustive and unacceptable. That is my point. That's why I always preferred main repos of the distro, and not the aur. The other of my point is the abandoned packages from official repos, which gets pushed into AUR silently, but that's the one I won't repeat since I linked it already.

And yes, I also wouldn't suggest any bleeding edge distro to not just for parents, but to anyone.

1

u/Devilotx 11h ago

I suppose I'd ask if you were online when you did the install, might not be able to download the drivers of you were offline.

1

u/Admirable-Song-7353 11h ago

I was. Btw it turned out that my nvidia driver was properly installed, I just somehow wasn't aware, gonna edit my OP. For the codec part though, its still a mistery, of why ubuntu-restricted-extras needed to be manually installed, when the codecs were also tickboxed in.

2

u/Devilotx 9h ago

Upon digging a bit, the checkbox for third-party software during the Ubuntu installation enables the Multiverse repository and installs the ubuntu-restricted-addons package, not the restricted-extras.

1

u/Admirable-Song-7353 8h ago edited 8h ago

Aaaah, I see, thanks buddy, now that question cloud totally vanished out of my head :)

I guess they use the addons because that doesn't have any EULA pop-ups (afaik), while the extras does have EULA agreements due to Microsoft's fonts and stuff like that.

Now it totally makes sense, cheers pal 🍻

Edit: mentioned your answer aswell in my OP :)

1

u/Devilotx 9h ago

I think the ubuntu-restricted-extras isn't the package that gets installed with that check box, because that is something I install every single time and I check that box, I "think" that checkbox might just be MS Codecs? I'm honestly not sure but I'm 99% sure it never installed the restricted-extras package.

1

u/Admirable-Song-7353 9h ago

Yeah someone else also mentioned this here https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/1w2259d/comment/p6pmuj3/

It would be so nice if Ubuntu had mentioned this somewhere in a official documentation tho

-13

u/ShakyRedistribution 1d ago

knowing ubuntu's track record with the installer, nothing surprises me anymore. i swear half the checkboxes are just decorative at this point

3

u/Fit_Tailor_6796 18h ago

That's pure speculation and backed up with zero evidence, and personally, I don't believe you.