Driver Manager on Mint

Linux Mint 22 / published / guide #57 / ≈ 4 min read

Mint's Driver Manager is the friendly answer to a question that used to torment Linux beginners: "do I have the right driver for this hardware?" Open it, look at the list, click the recommended option, reboot. That's the whole guide — but here's the longer version with explanations for the cases where the recommended choice isn't quite right.

What it actually does

Some hardware (mostly NVIDIA graphics, some Broadcom Wi-Fi chips, a few printers) doesn't have great open-source drivers — the vendor only releases a proprietary blob. Linux ships with whichever generic driver works, then Driver Manager offers you the proprietary one if it'll do better. You choose.

Open it

Menu → Driver Manager. (Search "drivers" if the icon moves.) Type your password.

It takes a minute to scan your hardware. You see something like:

NVIDIA Corporation: GP106 [GeForce GTX 1060 6GB]
  ( ) Using X.Org X server -- Nouveau display driver (open source)
  (•) Using NVIDIA driver metapackage from nvidia-driver-535 (proprietary, tested)
  ( ) Using NVIDIA driver metapackage from nvidia-driver-545 (proprietary)
  ( ) Do not use the device

One radio button is already selected — that's what's active now. The others are choices.

The terms, decoded

  • Open source / open / Nouveau — drivers shipped with Linux itself. Always works, sometimes slower or missing features (e.g. Vulkan on NVIDIA, advanced power management).
  • Proprietary, tested — vendor's closed driver. The one Mint specifically tested with your release. Best for "I have an NVIDIA card and want games to run well."
  • Proprietary (untested / newer) — newer version, not tested by Mint. Sometimes needed for the very latest GPUs.

Which one to pick — NVIDIA specifically

  • Office work, no games, no video editing — Nouveau is fine. Skip the proprietary one; it's one less thing to fight with on kernel upgrades.
  • Games, video editing, ML — proprietary (tested). Big performance gain.
  • Brand-new GPU (released in the last six months) — proprietary (untested) might be the only one that works. If the tested version gives you a black screen, try the newer one.
  • Laptop with hybrid Intel + NVIDIA graphics — proprietary, then look into prime-select for switching which GPU runs your apps. The Driver Manager handles the driver install; the per-app switching is separate.

Wi-Fi (Broadcom and friends)

Some Broadcom Wi-Fi cards (in older Dell, HP, and Mac hardware) need the broadcom-sta-dkms proprietary driver to work at all. If your Wi-Fi doesn't show any networks, check Driver Manager — there will be a Broadcom entry with a non-open-source choice. Pick it, reboot, Wi-Fi appears.

If you have no working internet to download the driver, plug in via ethernet temporarily, or use a phone USB tether.

The "Do not use the device" option

Useful when a hardware device is causing problems and you'd rather it not exist. Common case: an old onboard NVIDIA chip in a laptop where the integrated Intel GPU is plenty. Pick "Do not use the device" for the NVIDIA, and the kernel won't load any driver for it.

The "Apply Changes" button

After you change a radio button, click Apply Changes. Mint downloads and installs the new driver. For graphics drivers, it then asks you to reboot — do so.

What it does behind the scenes

Driver Manager is a friendly wrapper around ubuntu-drivers. The terminal equivalent:

ubuntu-drivers list                  # what's available for your hardware
sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall      # install the recommended one
sudo ubuntu-drivers install nvidia-driver-535
sudo apt install nvidia-driver-535   # the manual route

If the proprietary driver broke things

A bad NVIDIA install is the classic "black screen at boot." The recovery routine:

  1. At the GRUB menu, pick Advanced options for Linux Mint.
  2. Pick a kernel with "(recovery mode)" at the end.
  3. From the recovery menu, pick "root — Drop to root shell prompt."
  4. Remount root as writable: mount -o remount,rw /
  5. Remove the bad driver: apt purge 'nvidia-*' then apt install xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
  6. Reboot: reboot

You're back on the open driver. (Or, easier: roll back from a Timeshift snapshot.)

After a kernel update

Proprietary drivers are tied to the kernel. After a kernel upgrade, the driver needs to be rebuilt for the new kernel — DKMS (Dynamic Kernel Module Support) handles this automatically as part of the upgrade. If it ever fails, the symptom is "graphics work fine before, garbled after a kernel update."

The fix:

sudo apt install --reinstall nvidia-driver-535     # match your installed version
sudo dpkg-reconfigure nvidia-driver-535
sudo reboot

This rebuilds the kernel module against your current kernel.

When the Driver Manager shows nothing

That's the default for laptops with Intel graphics, AMD graphics, and modern Wi-Fi chips. There's nothing to install — the open-source drivers in the kernel are the best available. This is the normal state for most modern hardware.

Summary

Open it, look at what it offers, accept the "proprietary, tested" if you're a gamer or have a quirky chip, leave it alone if everything works. The five minutes you spend here can be the difference between "Mint runs nicely" and "Mint is a struggle."

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