Fix Nvidia and Wifi Drivers in Kodibuntu

I’ve built a Home Theater PC for a client based around the Asus Z97I-Plus motherboard and the Asus Nvidia GTX970 Mini graphics card.

Deciding on Kodibuntu for the OS, I was a bit confused by non-working Wi-Fi and an undetected Nvidia chipset.

Turns out support for the GTX970 and 980 was not added until a much later driver revision than the one available with Kodibuntu 14 (nvidia-304). Furthermore, a proprietary wireless driver was required for the new Broadcom wireless chipset.

Here’s how to fix the broken video and wifi:

Start by purging the old nvidia drivers. Logout of the traditional Kodi experience and select Lubuntu as the Desktop Environment at the login screen. When you get to the Desktop, click the Menu in the lower left corner and run XTerm. This will bring up a terminal to perform some Linux wizardry.

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*

Accept the prompts to remove all traces of any existing nvidia drivers.

Next, add the repository for the latest updated versions of nvidia goodness.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa

Update and install the newest nvidia drivers (349 as of writing this post).

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install nvidia-349

Accept the prompts to install the newest nvidia drivers.

While the terminal is still open, the non-working wifi can be easily fixed with the following command:

sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source

That’s the needed driver for Broadcom chipsets. If you have a different setup, I recommend throwing in a regular Ubuntu Live CD, navigate to System Settings > Additional Drivers, and see what pops up. If there’s something available that’s not open source, it will specify what package to install back in Kodibuntu.

Finish up with a reboot, head back into Lubuntu and check Nvidia Settings for a recognized GPU.

The wireless card should be recognized, a connection can be added by heading to network settings and adding a WiFi interface (wlan0)

Once that is complete, logout and reselect Kodi as the default DE, log back in and enjoy working 4K resolutions and wireless internet!