How to uninstall the NVIDIA drivers on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux

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In this tutorial, you will learn how to uninstall the NVIDIA drivers on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux, hence switch back to the open source Nouveau Nvidia drivers. Typically the proprietary drivers from Nvidia will offer better performance, but the Nouveau drivers are a good alternative if you run into issues.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to uninstall the Ubuntu repository and PPA NVIDIA drivers
  • How to uninstall the Official Nvidia driver
  • How to switch to Nouveau driver
Complete uninstall of the NVIDIA drivers on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux
Complete uninstall of the NVIDIA drivers on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux
Software Requirements and Linux Command Line Conventions
Category Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used
System Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish
Software N/A
Other Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command.
Conventions # – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command
$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

How to uninstall the NVIDIA drivers on Ubuntu 22.04 step by step instructions

Uninstall the Ubuntu repository and PPA NVIDIA drivers

  1. First thing you will need to do is open a command line terminal. Then, executing the following commands will remove the proprietary Nvidia driver: 
    $ sudo dpkg -P $(dpkg -l | grep nvidia-driver | awk '{print $2}')
$ sudo apt autoremove
  2. Switch back to nouveau driver by downloading the latest version with apt package manager: 
    $ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install xserver-xorg-video-nouveau

    Alternatively, the above switch from Nvidia to Nouveau driver can also be performed from GNOME GUI Software & Updates application window.

    Switching to Nouveau driver via Software application in GNOME
    Switching to Nouveau driver via Software application in GNOME
  3. Reboot your system for the changes to take effect. 
    $ reboot
  4. Once your system has rebooted confirm loaded nouveau modules with the lsmod command: 
    $ lsmod | grep nouveau
nouveau              1949696  4
mxm_wmi                16384  1 nouveau
ttm                   106496  1 nouveau
drm_kms_helper        184320  1 nouveau
drm                   491520  7 drm_kms_helper,ttm,nouveau
i2c_algo_bit           16384  1 nouveau
wmi                    32768  3 wmi_bmof,mxm_wmi,nouveau
video                  49152  1 nouveau

Uninstall the official NVIDIA drivers

For Nvidia drivers downloaded and installed from the official Nvidia website follow the below steps for Nvidia driver uninstall and to switch back to Nouveau opensource driver.

  1. Locate the installation script used to install the Nvidia driver. In case you cannot locate the original installation script simply re-download it again. 
    $ ls
NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-440.44.run
  2. Uninstall the Nvidia Driver. Update the below Nvidia script name where appropriate : 
    $ sudo bash NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-XXX.XX.run --uninstall
  3. If you have not done so yet, restore your xorg original configuration from backup:\ 
    $ sudo nvidia-xconfig --restore-original-backup
  4. Enable Nouveau modules. If you followed our guide on how to disable nouveau drivers on Ubuntu 22.04 execute the following command: 
    $ sudo rm /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nvidia-nouveau.conf
  5. Reboot your Ubuntu 22.04 system for these changes to take effect. 
    $ reboot

Closing Thoughts


In this tutorial, you saw how to uninstall Nvidia drivers on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux. You also saw how to switch back to using the default Nouveau driver, which is an open source alternative.

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