Nvidia Drivers, How to Install it in Ubuntu

 

Nvidia has just announced a new version of graphics driver 343.22 for Linux with new GPUs support and various fixes.

According to the release highlights, Nvidia 343.22 added support for GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980, removed support for G8x, G9x, and GT2xx GPUs, and motherboard chipsets based on them. Ongoing support for new Linux kernels and X servers, as well as fixes for critical bugs, will be included in 340.* legacy releases through the end of 2019.

 

NOTE: Ubuntu provides “nvidia-current” driver, available in Software Center, which may interact better with your distribution’s framework, and you may want to use this rather than NVIDIA’s official package.

Nvidia 343.22 Released, How to Install it in Ubuntu 14.04/12.04

Edited by NickAu, 09 May 2017 - 05:55 AM.
Topic title changed at OP's request

Because it is available via PPA, installing the Nvidia 343.58 drivers on the listed Ubuntu, Linux Mint . All you have to do is add the ppa to your system, update the local repository index and install the nvidia-340 package.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install nvidia-340

Optional, to remove the Nvidia drivers, do:

$ sudo apt-get remove nvidia-340

Thanks for the info, NickAu1.

 

installing the Nvidia 343.58

Is that 340.58 as well?

Wizard

• Added support for GeForce GTX 970M and GeForce GTX 980M GPUs.
• Added support for decoding VP8 video streams using the NVCUVID API on GPUs with VP8 hardware decode support.
• Added the ability to increase the operating voltage on certain GeForce GPUs in the GeForce GTX 400 series and later. Voltage adjustments are done at the users own risk.
• Added accelerated support for r8g8b8a8, r8g8b8x8, b8g8r8a8 and b8g8r8x8 RENDER formats.
• Added support for the EGL_EXT_device_base, EGL_EXT_platform_device, and EGL_EXT_output_base extensions.
• Added support in nvidia-settings for GTK+3 UI, an option --use-gtk2 available to force the use of GTK+2 library.
• Support for the latest Linux Kernel 3.17 / 3.18 series.
• Performance improvements and various bug fixes.

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

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install nvidia-346 nvidia-settings

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa

sudo apt-get remove nvidia-346

Release Notes for 346.16 drivers

• Added support for the following GPUs: GeForce GTX 970M, GeForce GTX 980M
• Fixed a bug that caused a blank screen when setting a mode requiring YUV 4:2:0 compression. These modes are not currently supported.
• Fixed a bug that caused an incorrect DisplayPort link configuration to be displayed after a hotplug or unplug.
• Added support for decoding VP8 video streams using the NVCUVID API on GPUs with VP8 hardware decode support.
• Added support for the following EGL extensions: EGL_EXT_device_base, EGL_EXT_platform_device, EGL_EXT_output_base
• Added the ability to increase the operating voltage on certain GeForce GPUs in the GeForce GTX 400 series and later. Voltage adjustments are done at the user's own risk. See the documentation on the "CoolBits" X configuration option in the README for details.
• Added support for NVENC on GeForce GPUs. For more details on the NVENC SDK, see:
• https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-video-codec-sdk.
• Removed a sanity check in nvidia-installer that tested the availability of POSIX shared memory. The NVIDIA GPU driver has not required POSIX shared memory since release 270.xx.
• Added accelerated support for r8g8b8a8, r8g8b8x8, b8g8r8a8 and b8g8r8x8 RENDER formats.
• Updated nvidia-settings to take advantage of GTK+ 3, when available. This is implemented by building the nvidia-settings user interface into separate shared libraries (libnvidia-gtk2.so, libnvidia-gtk3.so), and loading the correct one at run-time.
• Added the nvidia-settings option --gtk-library to allow specifying the path of the directory containing the user interface library or the path and filename of the specific library to use.
• Added support in nvidia-settings for a GTK+ 3 user interface on x86 and x86_64.
• Added the nvidia-settings option --use-gtk2 to force the use of the GTK+ 2 UI library.
• Updated nvidia-installer to install a file in the system's xorg.conf.d directory, when a sufficiently new X server is detected, to cause the X server to load the "nvidia" X driver automatically if it is started after the NVIDIA kernel module is loaded.
• This feature is supported in X.Org xserver 1.16 and higher when running on Linux 3.9 or higher with CONFIG_DRM enabled.
• Improved the performance of nvidia-installer by enabling the use of parallel make when building the NVIDIA kernel modules. The concurrency level can be set with the --concurrency-level option, and defaults to the number of detected CPUs.
• Updated nvidia-installer to determine default installation locations for libraries based on the presence of known paths in the ldconfig(8) cache and the filesystem, rather than hardcoded distro-specific paths.
• Fixed a GLSL compiler bug that would produce corruption when running games in Wine.
• Fixed the EGL_KHR_stream_cross_process_fd extension.
• Fixed rendering corruption that sometimes happened when calling
• DrawElementsInstancedBaseVertexBaseInstance(),
• DrawElementsInstancedBaseInstance(),
• or DrawArraysInstancedBaseInstance().
• Dramatically improved OpenGL Framebuffer Object creation performance.
• Removed the limit on the maximum number of OpenGL Framebuffer Objects.
• Updated the NVIDIA OpenGL driver to prefer $XDG_CACHE_HOME over $HOME as the default location for storing the GL shader disk cache.

Supported Cards (using 346.16 drivers) are as follows:

• GeForce 900 Series: GeForce GTX 980, GeForce GTX 970
• GeForce 900M Series (Notebooks): GeForce GTX 980M, GeForce GTX 970M
• GeForce 800M Series (Notebooks): GeForce GTX 880M, GeForce GTX 870M, GeForce GTX 860M, GeForce GTX 850M, GeForce 840M, GeForce 830M, GeForce 820M, GeForce 810M
• GeForce 700 Series: GeForce GTX TITAN Z, GeForce GTX TITAN Black, GeForce GTX TITAN, GeForce GTX 780 Ti, GeForce GTX 780, GeForce GTX 770, GeForce GTX 760, GeForce GTX 760 Ti (OEM), GeForce GTX 750 Ti, GeForce GTX 750, GeForce GTX 745, GeForce GT 740, GeForce GT 730, GeForce GT 720, GeForce GT 710, GeForce GT 705
• GeForce 700M Series (Notebooks): GeForce GTX 780M, GeForce GTX 770M, GeForce GTX 765M, GeForce GTX 760M, GeForce GT 755M, GeForce GT 750M, GeForce GT 745M, GeForce GT 740M, GeForce GT 735M, GeForce GT 730M, GeForce GT 720M, GeForce 710M
• GeForce 600 Series: GeForce GTX 690, GeForce GTX 680, GeForce GTX 670, GeForce GTX 660 Ti, GeForce GTX 660, GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST, GeForce GTX 650 Ti, GeForce GTX 650, GeForce GTX 645, GeForce GT 645, GeForce GT 640, GeForce GT 630, GeForce GT 620, GeForce GT 610, GeForce 605
• GeForce 600M Series (Notebooks): GeForce GTX 680MX, GeForce GTX 680M, GeForce GTX 675MX, GeForce GTX 675M, GeForce GTX 670MX, GeForce GTX 670M, GeForce GTX 660M, GeForce GT 650M, GeForce GT 645M, GeForce GT 640M, GeForce GT 640M LE, GeForce GT 635M, GeForce GT 630M, GeForce GT 625M, GeForce GT 620M, GeForce 610M
• GeForce 500 Series: GeForce GTX 590, GeForce GTX 580, GeForce GTX 570, GeForce GTX 560 Ti, GeForce GTX 560 SE, GeForce GTX 560, GeForce GTX 555, GeForce GTX 550 Ti, GeForce GT 545, GeForce GT 530, GeForce GT 520, GeForce 510
• GeForce 500M Series (Notebooks): GeForce GTX 580M, GeForce GTX 570M, GeForce GTX 560M, GeForce GT 555M, GeForce GT 550M, GeForce GT 540M, GeForce GT 525M, GeForce GT 520M, GeForce GT 520MX
• GeForce 400 Series: GeForce GTX 480, GeForce GTX 470, GeForce GTX 465, GeForce GTX 460 SE v2, GeForce GTX 460 SE, GeForce GTX 460, GeForce GTS 450, GeForce GT 440, GeForce GT 430, GeForce GT 420
• GeForce 400M Series (Notebooks): GeForce GTX 485M, GeForce GTX 480M, GeForce GTX 470M, GeForce GTX 460M, GeForce GT 445M, GeForce GT 435M, GeForce GT 425M, GeForce GT 420M, GeForce GT 415M, GeForce 410M
• Quadro Series: Quadro K6000, Quadro K5000, Quadro K4000, Quadro K2000, Quadro K2000D, Quadro K600, Quadro 6000, Quadro 5000, Quadro 4000, Quadro 2000, Quadro 2000D, Quadro 600, Quadro 410
• Quadro Series (Notebooks): Quadro K5100M, Quadro K5000M, Quadro K4100M, Quadro K4000M, Quadro K3100M, Quadro K2100M, Quadro K3000M, Quadro K2000M, Quadro K1100M, Quadro K1000M, Quadro K610M, Quadro K510M, Quadro K500M, Quadro 5010M, Quadro 5000M, Quadro 4000M, Quadro 3000M, Quadro 2000M, Quadro 1000M
• Quadro NVS Series: NVS 510, NVS 315, NVS 310
• Quadro NVS Series (Notebooks): NVS 5400M, NVS 5200M, NVS 4200M
• Quadro Plex Series: Quadro Plex 7000
• Quadro Sync Series: Quadro Sync, Quadro G-Sync II
• Quadro SDI: Quadro SDI
• GRID Series: GRID K2, GRID K520, GRID K1, GRID K340
• NVS Series: NVS 510, NVS 315, NVS 310
• NVS Series (Notebooks): NVS 5400M, NVS 5200M, NVS 4200M

Supported OS Ubuntu 15.04/14.10/14.04/12.04/Linux Mint 17.1/17/13/and other related Ubuntu derivatives
To Install/Update Nvidia card drivers open Terminal (Press Ctrl+Alt+T) and copy the following commands in the Terminal:

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

To install 346.xx drivers (Still in Beta)

sudo apt-get install nvidia-346 nvidia-settings

Screen Blanks/Monitor Turns Off (Geforce Go card)
Using a laptop with a GeForce Go card, or connecting the sole display via DVI on a dual-head system sometimes results in the screen not receiving a picture. This is caused by the driver outputting video to the VGA port on the graphics card, instead of DVI.
The usual hint that you have this problem is when you hear the startup sound but nothing appears on the screen. If you do not hear any sound, you are more than likely experiencing unrelated problems.
Switch to the console by using CTRL+ALT+F1, or reboot and select recovery mode from the GRUB menu.
Open and edit xorg.conf like this: sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Find the line that says: Section "Screen"
Insert a new line that says Option "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP"
Save the file. Use sudo reboot to restart your computer.

Uninstall Nvidia Drivers
If something went wrong after installation of NVIDIA drivers, then follow these steps to recover.
1-Boot into recovery mode
If you don't see Grub (recovery option) just hold "Shift" before boot and choose recovery option
2- Now in following menu choose "root"
3- Now uninstall Nvidia drivers using commands:

sudo apt-get remove nvidia*
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa

4-> Now remove xorg configuration:

sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf

5- Now Reinstall the Mesa package for GL

sudo apt-get --reinstall install libgl1-mesa-glx

And Reboot.

How To Install The NVIDIA 340.76 Driver On Linux Systems
For 32 bit systems:

$ wget us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/340.76/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-340.76.run

 
For 64 bit systems:

$ wget us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/340.76/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-340.76.run

 
Set execution permissions:

$ sudo chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-*-340.76.run

Kill the display manager, which can either be: kdm for KDE, gdm for Gnome, lightdm for LXDE and XFCE, mdm (for Linux Mint):

$ sudo /etc/init.d/kdm stop

OR:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop

OR:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/lightdm stop

OR:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/mdm stop

And finally, run the Nvidia binary file:

$ sudo ./NVIDIA-Linux-*-340.76.run

NVIDIA nForce Drivers
Open source drivers for NVIDIA nForce hardware are included in the standard Linux kernel and leading Linux distributions. This page includes information on open source drivers, and driver disks for older Linux distributions including 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Linux.
- See more at: http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html#sthash.KuVAGfQd.dpuf

Unix Driver Archive
http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html

$ sudo apt-get remove nvidia-349 nvidia-settings

Edited by NickAu, 26 March 2015 - 11:46 PM.

sudo apt-get install nvidia-detect

nvidia-detect

I use nvidia-detect. To install nvidia-detect:
 

sudo apt-get install nvidia-detect

Then to run it type:

nvidia-detect

in the terminal.

It searches your computer for nvidia cards, and recommends a driver.

 

That is odd as I don't know what, not your post, but the output of the command, it's as though a NVIDIA card isn't there. 

 

cat@cat-XPS-8700 ~ $ sudo apt-get install nvidia-detect

[sudo] password for cat: 

Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree       

Reading state information... Done

E: Unable to locate package nvidia-detect

cat@cat-XPS-8700 ~ $ nvidia-detect

nvidia-detect: command not found

cat@cat-XPS-8700 ~ $ 

 

Yet am running the card right now.

Cat

Edited by Al1000, 16 April 2015 - 04:51 AM.

Al, that was the very first place I looked, normally will check the Driver Manager while the Updates are being compiled.

There was none. Just a blank page.

If I were to perform an install, there likely would be one, however I'd still want the latest, as there's improvements & fixes over the ones released in January.

Cat

If your machine is equipped with a Nvidia gpu and you want to make use of it to the fullest, you need to install the proprietary Nvidia drivers. Furtunately Linux Mint makes it easy to accomplish this. Unfortunately you need to now the following steps, since you otherwise might end up with an unusable system that just tells you that it couldn't load the right driver.
 
1. Find out which driver you need
- because nvidia sometimes decides to not include older cards in the newest driver versions, you need to find out if your card is still supported by the most recent driver (installed by the nvidia-glx package) or whether you might need to install a package with a specific version. A little program called nvidia-detect helps you with this
- open up a terminal window and install it with the following command: sudo apt-get install nvidia-detect
- after the install start it by entering: sudo nvidia-detect
- if it tells you that you need "nvidia-glx" your card is still supported by the latest version and you can install the proprietary driver with the commands in the next step. If not replace nvidia-glx with the package nvidia-detect tells you to use
2. Install the proprietary Nvidia driver
- for installing the driver, a little helper program to make it work and the nvidia configuration tool, open up a terminal and copy/paste the following:
sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx nvidia-settings nvidia-xconfig
- THIS STEP IS CRITICAL: after the installation is finished execute the following command: sudo nvidia-xconfig
- nvidia-xconfig creates a xorg.conf file that tells the kernel which driver to use. Other drivers don't need this config file anymore so it has to be created. Also the installation of the driver ends with the message that the nouveau driver is still active and the easiest solution is to just reboot, without this step you'll end up with system without a graphical interface. If you are allready at that point, just login and enter sudo nvidia-xconfig now
- done!

http://www.howtoeverything.net/linux/hardware/installing-nvidia-drivers-in-linux-mint

Edited by NickAu, 16 April 2015 - 08:24 PM.

It didn't do my any good Nick & why, I have no idea. As posted in my Topic in regards to my issue, it can clearly be seen that I have the latest NVIDIA driver installed. 

Though as posted in that Topic, wonder if it's coming from the 'fresh upgrading' of each new Mint release. Clean installing root, reusing /home as is. There's one install that's used the same /home since version 12. 

Now I'm beginning to understand the frustration that Linus Torvalds shown in court a few years back, flipping his middle finger to the NVIDIA official during the hearing.

I'm not going to purchase a power hogging, 3-4 year old card, even if new, just to have drivers. Newer is better, even if we have to deal with some issues, which may mean the end of the year before 'official' support is offered. On my notebook, can afford to go back a few releases, as there's no real benefit of the latest drivers on a GeForce GT 425M. Yet I would prefer to use branded drivers over that crap called Nouveau bandaided with Bumblebee. 

Cat

Nvidia 352.21 release highlights:

• Added support for the following GPUs:
  • GeForce 720A
  • GeForce 920A
  • GeForce 930A
  • GeForce 940A
  • GeForce GTX 950A
  • GeForce GTX 980 Ti
• Fixed a bug that caused the Display Configuration page of the nvidia-settings control panel to automatically generate layouts with multiple displays occupying the same position when enabling or disabling Base Mosaic.
• Updated nvidia-settings to allow the use of the standard Display Configuration page when SLI Mosaic is enabled.
• Fixed a bug that caused the kernel to report errors when unmapping DMA allocations on kernels with CONFIG_DEBUG_DMA_API enabled.
• Added GLX Protocol support for the following OpenGL extensions:
  • GL_ARB_copy_buffer
  • GL_ARB_texture_buffer_object
• Fixed a bug that caused a kernel crash if SLI Mosaic and G-SYNC were used at the same time on a configuration with more display devices connected to one GPU than another.
• Added the ability to configure the swapping behavior for quad-buffered stereo visuals. The driver can be configured to independently swap each eye as it becomes ready, to wait for both eyes to complete rendering before swapping, or to allow applications to specify which of these two behaviors is preferred by setting the swap interval. This setting can be adjusted in the nvidia-settings control panel, or via the NV-CONTROL API.
• Fixed a regression which caused the GPU fan status display to disappear from the nvidia-settings control panel.
• Added reporting of ECC error counts to the nvidia-settings control panel.
• Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented OpenGL sampler objects from being properly deallocated when destroying OpenGL contexts.
• Fixed a bug that caused GLX_EXT_framebuffer_sRGB to incorrectly report sRGB support in 30 bit-per-pixel framebuffer configurations.
• Added support for G-SYNC with sync-to-vblank disabled. This allows applications to use G-SYNC to eliminate tearing for frame rates below the monitor’s maximum refresh rate but allow tearing above the maximum refresh rate in order to minimize latency.
• When G-SYNC is active and sync-to-vblank is enabled, the frame rate is limited to the monitor’s maximum refresh rate.
• GLSL gl_Fog.scale is now +infinity when gl_Fog.end equals gl_Fog.start. Previously, the value 0 was used, but this broke certain applications such as the game XIII running on Wine (Wine bug #37068).
• Enabled G-SYNC by default when Unified Back Buffer (UBB) is disabled.
• Updated the NVIDIA GPU driver to avoid using video memory already in use by vesafb.
• Fixed a bug in nvidia-settings that caused the application to crash when saving the EDID to a file.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the “mkprecompiled” utility included in the driver package from reading files correctly.
• Fixed a bug that could cause an Xid error when terminating a video playback application using the overlay presentation queue in VDPAU.
• Updated nvidia-installer to avoid recursing too deeply into kernel source trees under /usr/lib/modules, mirroring an existing restriction on recursion under /lib/modules.
• Fixed a rare deadlock condition when running applications that use OpenGL in multiple threads on a Quadro GPU.
• Fixed a kernel memory leak that occurred when looping hardware- accelerated video decoding with VDPAU on Maxwell-based GPUs.
• Fixed a bug that caused the X server to crash if a RandR 1.4 output provided by a Sink Output provider was selected as the primary output on X.Org xserver 1.17 and higher.
• Fixed a bug that caused waiting on X Sync Fence objects in OpenGL to hang indefinitely in some cases.
• Fixed a bug that prevented OpenGL from properly recovering from hardware errors or sync object waits that had timed out.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mamarley/nvidia

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install nvidia-352 nvidia-settings