I recently bought an older macbook pro 3,1 and have installed Ubuntu Studio 12.04, but am having a problem with the driver for the video card, an nVidia 8600M GT.

On a fresh install, the machine booted to a shell prompt with no GUI. Startx gave me this error:

Fatal server error:
no screens found

After searching through a lot of forums, I found one solution on this site which worked.
I added 2 lines to xorg.conf changing it from this:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection

to this:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
BusID "PCI:1:0.0
Option "NoLogo" "True"
EndSection

startx, and I have a desktop! But something is still missing. After logging into gnome shell (installed from webupd8 PPA), going to system settings > details > graphics shows:

driver: unknown
experience: fallback

Going to system tools > administration > nVidia X server settings gives me an error window saying:

You do not appear to be using the NVIDIA X driver.
Please edit your X configuration file (just run `nvidia-xconfig` as root), and restart the X server.

after running nvidia-xconfig and rebooting, I'm back to the "no screens found" problem.

I've tried every driver listed in the "additional drivers" menu. I've also added xswat ppa, apt-get update, apt-get upgrade, but the nVidia driver still doesn't work properly.

xorg.conf file:

Code:
  1. # nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig

# nvidia-xconfig:  version 310.14  (buildmeister@swio-display-x86-rhel47-06.nvidia.com)  Tue Oct  9 13:04:01 PDT 2012
 
 
Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection
 
Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection
 
Section "InputDevice"
 
        # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection
 
Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Unknown"
    HorizSync       28.0 - 33.0
    VertRefresh     43.0 - 72.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection
 
Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0.0
    Option     "NoLogo"      "True"
EndSection
 
Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "NoLogo" "True"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Any help is appreciated. I am a new Ubuntu user, but after spending so much time reading through forum posts, I'd love to be able to mark this "solved," both for me and for any future users having the same problem.

Thanks!