[solved]NVIDIA driver problems

[Novega]

This guide worked for me I had no problems whatsoever. Hopefully those that are experiencing difficulties can get them resolved soon as well.

I did have a quick question though: when a new kernel is released, will those who used this guide have to re-install the driver? ...and do we use the same method?

I'm a new user and just trying to think ahead

[zhinker]

This guide worked for me I had no problems whatsoever. Hopefully those that are experiencing difficulties can get them resolved soon as well.

I did have a quick question though: when a new kernel is released, will those who used this guide have to re-install the driver? ...and do we use the same method?

I'm a new user and just trying to think ahead

Good point. More importantly, will the nvidia drivers update themselves automatically?

[vexorian]

They don't update themselves automatically.

You will have to reinstall the driver everytime the kernel is updated (often by the security repo)

So, if after a kernel update everything breaks, don't panic, just execute the .run again.

When a new version of ubuntu comes and you want to update, make sure to uninstall nvidia's driver first.

[lswest]

It says that my build-essential package is the newest, and it still can't find a precompiled kernel. So, no 9600 GT on Hardy for me yet.

Are you sure you downloaded the beta nvidia drivers for the 9 series? And i'm envious my graphic cards both in my PC and in my laptop are low-end

[techstop]

Thanks mate! Worked a treat on my 9600GT!

[Novega]

So like I said, this worked 100% perfect for me on my 32 bit Ubuntu system

BUT ... Now I'm setting up a x64 (K)ubuntu system (with KDE4, if it makes any difference?), following this guide exactly isn't gonna work I don't think.

So how would I change the commands to suit a x64 KDE build ?

[vexorian]

I think it should probably work as long as you download the 64 nvidia driver.

[Novega]

I think it should probably work as long as you download the 64 nvidia driver.

ok cool, so instead of "gdm stop" do I use "kdm stop" b/c it's kde and not gnome?

[cjhermann]

Thanks for the howto enthrall

As an aside, I've installed nvidia proprietary drivers before without hassle, but this time for some reason the nvidia installer errored saying I didn't have the libc development headers installed and wouldn't work (Fresh install of Hardy Heron).

If this happens to you, just stay in your Ctrl+Alt+F1 prompt and type

sudo apt-get install libc6-dev

That will install libc6 and libc6-dev (about 14MB worth to download I think), after which you can run the nvidia installer again successfully.
Don't forget to edit /etc/defaults/linux-restricted-modules-common as described in the first post.

Thanks!

[zr0gee]

This worked without a hitch for the GeForce 9800 GTX aswell.

I recently got hold of a 9800GTX, and a couple of days after I decided to completely switch over to Ubuntu and nuke my Windows partition

Initially, I had problems installing this nVidia beta driver, because I was missing the last step (the step where you start-up the x-server again, and edit a config-file before rebooting), which the OP describes in the how-to.

So.. thx alot for this howto, and I'm thrilled to say I'm not going back to vista