Nvidia Drivers, How to Install it in Ubuntu

The cool thing about adding the mamarley/nvidia PPA, one always gets the latest NVIDIA drivers afterwards through the normal Update Manager afterwards, that's how my last two were installed on my main PC running Linux MInt 17.1 MATE edition. Both inside of 10 days. 

Unfortunately, it caused Cinnamon 17.1 that's so overrated to crash (the DE, not the entire OS) on my MSI notebook with dual graphics (Intel HD built in with a discrete GeForce NVIDIA 425M card. Maybe the notebook wasn't designed to use that driver, though it was running the Xorg of the same fine, and I also had the NVIDIA Control Panel. All of the panel items were gone and the only showing at the top, were Applications & Places, and no Terminal. Though I was able to access the Terminal by right clicking on the desktop & got it going again. 

Will reinstall & start over, there's some broken dependencies, it only takes a couple of hours & the install is only 3 days old. No big deal to me. 

If I have to use the Xorg drivers, of which I was offered several, including the 352, so it be. After all, it's 4 & a half years old, yet still a solid performer. Just wanted a taste of some Cinnamon, and all was going fine until I did the same as on the Dell. Sometimes, I just don't know when to quit for my own good & should have stopped at the instructions posted in Post #2 of this Topic & likely would have been fine. Though like my KDE trial, there's some things that doesn't work in Cinnamon as it does with MATE. 

BTW, on that card, there is no advantage of having the NVIDIA 352 drivers, many are still on the more compatible 331 version. 

The only thing about it, it's this same driver version for Windows installed & is working fine on both Windows 7 & 8.1 Pro on the same notebook. Though still, there's no advantage, other than having the latest driver, which goes to show, depending on hardware & OS, having the latest driver isn't the best choice. 

Keep up the great work, Nick!

Cat

Hi gang. Harking back to #9 with Al and Cat, and Nick's subsequent input:

I use LMM 17 Qiana, and the nvidia-detect protocol yields the following:

I find myself wondering if there is a hiccup with Qiana such as the Ctrl-Alt-T for Terminal invocation that was omitted with Qiana and reinstated with Rebecca?

May I ask what Linux Mint versions were used by the others?

Wiz

Thanks for that Al.

Installing in Linux Mint was covered.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/549534/nvidia-drivers-how-to-install-it-in-ubuntu-14041204/?p=3682997

 

 

Nvidia 352.21 release highlights:

+1!

Cat

Hi gang. Harking back to #9 with Al and Cat, and Nick's subsequent input:

 

I use LMM 17 Qiana, and the nvidia-detect protocol yields the following:

 

 

I find myself wondering if there is a hiccup with Qiana such as the Ctrl-Alt-T for Terminal invocation that was omitted with Qiana and reinstated with Rebecca?

 

May I ask what Linux Mint versions were used by the others?

 

Wiz

Linux MInt 17.1 MATE. Depending on computer, some can benefit from the instructions in Post #15 that Nick provided, while others has to use the XOrg PPA. 

Some users will also need to enable Bumblebee or bumblebee-nvidia (both in the Package Manager), as well as bumblebee-dbg for debugging NVIDIA Optimus that many newer notebooks & AIO PC's has. Unfortunately, there's no AIO answer for everyone, because of all of the different computer configurations. Whomever came up with the idea of having Intel HD graphics in a notebook or AIO PC along with a discrete card with no way to disable the onboard in the BIOS should have been demoted from his/her position & given the position of Sanitation Engineer for life. 

One person is responsible for this utterly stupid idea that has wreaked headaches (or migraines) for the masses, and everyone else (all of the OEM's) picked up on it & implemented it in their BIOS configuration. This is not progress, it's like taking one step forward & getting sacked in the backfield. 

On the other hand, desktop PC consumers has the choice to disable onboard video & audio & has for years. One of the reasons why the PC will never die. 

Cat

Just so people know, the latest Nvidia driver for older cards - 304.125, will break the functionality of Unity desktop, at least in Ubuntu 15.04 (I don't know about other versions). 

When I installed the driver, the launch icons and the controls at the top of the screen no longer appeared, and I had to do everything by right-clicking the screen and opening a terminal. I was able to install Synaptic, and via Synaptic installed Mate desktop, and so long as I log into Mate, everything is fine now.

yu gnomi, I believe you're right, 304 is the recommended NVIDIA driver for some older computers with Linux, as well as some that aren't that old, yet the newer drives provides zero benefit. Linux distros aren't like Windows OS's, and won't make the adjustments to newer drivers on all systems, the end result, a partially or fully broken OS. 

This is another example of 'newer isn't always better' coming into play. 

Some may find that it's best to go with the XOrg driver PPA for this reason, these has been tested more extensively for Linux compatibility & the added benefit being that a newer driver may not break the OS. 

Cat

unfortunately, Steam client seems to require the latest version of proprietary GPU driver to function. I think there is other software "ported" into Linux that similarly only works properly with proprietary drivers. However, if you don't need the proprietary driver, then simply sticking with default Xwindow/xorg setup is probably best - at very least it is easier.

@yu gnomi

Just so people know, the latest Nvidia driver for older cards - 304.125, will break the functionality of Unity desktop, at least in Ubuntu 15.04 (I don't know about other versions). 

 

When I installed the driver, the launch icons and the controls at the top of the screen no longer appeared, and I had to do everything by right-clicking the screen and opening a terminal. I was able to install Synaptic, and via Synaptic installed Mate desktop, and so long as I log into Mate, everything is fine now.

Thanks for sharing.

I went through all sorts of travails with nVidia, you can read about them here:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/546720/nvidia-alternatives-ubuntu-and-other-distros/

...That was initially under 14.04 Trusty Tahr, but extended to Linux Mint Mate. Below is my current state from its Driver Manager

I have been using the Nouveau driver ever since, but I am not a Gamer, so if you are using Steam, I understand the Nouveau has some performance issues.

Wizard

Yes, one needs the proprietary driver for Steam, though I don't use it, have seen where others has stated the same. I have the proprietary ones on my desktop & will likely be installing the XOrg ones back on the MSI, once I figure out what I'm going to do with the computer (the OS layout). Back in late 2010, a GeForce GT425M card (Fermi) was a bigger deal than today, and at the time, an upper middle fast card. Today, it's fallen deep in the charts & on the very outer range of current NVIDIA driver support for Windows. 

For what I use the notebook for, the XOrg drivers are fine & still get the benefit of the NVIDIA Control Panel. 

On the other hand, that's likely why I have to apply the workaround option for Google Earth to work on that computer, the straight 64 bit .deb file installer of it, which works perfectly on my main PC, crashes as soon as it opens on the MSI. This solves the issue.  

http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/1710

Cat

 

• Fixed a regression, introduced in 358.09, that caused incorrect rendering of OpenGL stereo applications in combination with Quadro Sync on certain GPUs.
• Fixed a regression, introduced in 358.09, that caused OpenGL stereo applications to hang when SLI AFR, SFR, or SLIAA modes were enabled.
• Fixed a regression, introduced in 358.09, that caused the system to hang while launching OpenGL applications when some SLI Mosaic topologies were in use.
• Fixed a bug that could cause some G-SYNC monitors to flicker on Kepler-based GPUs when running at low frame rates.
• Fixed a regression that could cause OpenGL or VDPAU applications to hang in Xinerama layouts which include multiple X screens that are driven by the same GPU.
• Added a fallback to allow GLX to function when UNIX domain socket communication is blocked between NVIDIA client-side GLX and NVIDIA server-side GLX. For example, the default SELinux policy on Fedora 22 prevents the NVIDIA 358.09 GLX driver from working in GDM3:
  
  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1271401
   
• Fixed a bug that could cause nvidia-installer to crash when installing from a driver package that has had precompiled kernel interfaces added to it (e.g., by using the "--add-this-kernel" option).
• Fixed a regression from 358.09 that caused G-SYNC monitors configured to use 3D Vision stereo to go blank and report an unsupported signal.
• Fixed a regression from 358.09 that caused OpenGL applications that failed to negotiate permission to perform glXSwapBuffers via flipping to stop updating the screen.  This was triggered on Fedora 22 where the SELinux system policy prevents gnome-shell from communicating with the X server.
  
  Now, OpenGL applications that fail to negotiate flipping will fall back to glXSwapBuffers via blitting.
  
  See https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1271401 for more details.
   
• Fixed a regression that reduced OpenGL performance on headless X server configurations.
• Fixed a memory leak that occurred after destroying a GLXWindow which still has the current context attached to it.
• Fixed a bug which caused EGL pbuffers to be created with both a front and back buffer, instead of a back buffer only, as is required for EGL.
• Added a new kernel module, nvidia-modeset.ko.  This new driver component works in conjunction with the nvidia.ko kernel module to program the display engine of the GPU.
  
  nvidia-modeset.ko does not provide any new user-visible functionality or interfaces to third party applications.  However, in a later release, nvidia-modeset.ko will be used as a basis for the modesetting interface provided by the kernel's direct rendering manager (DRM).
   
• Reduced flickering and delays when transitioning into or out of G-SYNC mode.  As part of this change, monitors that have G-SYNC indicators in their on-screen displays will now always report that they are in G-SYNC mode.  The OpenGL G-SYNC visual indicator can be enabled in nvidia-settings to determine when G-SYNC is actually being used.
• GLX protocol for the following OpenGL extension from OpenGL 3.0 has been promoted from unofficial to ARB approved official status:
  
  GL_EXT_draw_buffers2
   
• GLX protocol for the following OpenGL 3.0 commands:
  
  BindBufferRangeNV
  BindBufferBaseNV
  BeginTransformFeedbackNV
  EndTransformFeedbackNV
  GetTransformFeedbackVaryingEXT
  TransformFeedbackVaryingsEXT
  which are part of the following extensions:
  
  GL_NV_transform_feedback
  GL_EXT_transform_feedback
  
  has been promoted from unofficial to ARB approved official status.
  
  With the above changes, GLX protocol for OpenGL 3.0 has been promoted from unofficial to ARB approved official status.
   
• Added a new system memory allocation mechanism for large allocations in the OpenGL driver.  This mechanism allows unmapping the allocation from the process when it is not in use, making more virtual address space available to the application.  It is enabled by default on 32 bit OpenGL applications with Linux 3.11+ and glibc 2.19+.  Memory allocated this way will consume space in /dev/shm. Setting the environment variable __GL_DevShmPageableAllocations to 2 will disable this feature
• Added support for OpenGL 4.3.
• Added support for X.Org xserver ABI 20 (xorg-server 1.18).

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/95921/en-us

To add the PPA open terminal and type or copy and paste.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa

After adding PPA, run these commands.

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install nvidia-358 nvidia-settings

Now THIS is interesting, Nick, or at least I find it so:

You know the dramas I've had with Nvidia, as documented elsewhere?

I am sending this from the new Toshiba Satellite laptop, "toshi", which shipped with an Intel/Nvidia combo graphics, and Windows 8 was the onboard OS.

After Elaine and I decided that "Metro" should be spelt "Z-E-R-O", we very quickly got rid of it, and it is currently running six (6) Linux Distros, with more to follow.

Out of habit, once nuking the Windows, I have run it with the Xorg Nouveau driver, but still had some graphics issues with a couple of the Debian-based Distros that are in stock here.

On a whim, on a wing & a prayer, whatever, with your posting above today, I decided to give 358 a shot. Below are some screenshots:

Where the mouse pointer is at bumblebee I will ask in a moment.

A partial output from

inxi -Fs

shows the following:

... with 358 installed, as seen.

I chose Ubuntu Mate 15.10 Wily Werewolf to be my guinea pig for this, desktop shows as below:

Interesting I found was that, on reboot, the mouse pointer defaulted to being near where I have placed it for the shot, but actually right on the friendly Ubuntu circly hands-together icon (for Applications), rather than defaulting to centre of screen, as I usually find, but I have been focussed on Nouveau for a long time, so tell me if I am wrong.

Also on right-top side, the green Nvdia icon I have not had for a long time, on a regular basis.

Ubuntu Mate has survived a couple of reboots under this new environment, and I am hopeful I can port this to more of my Distros that need a graphics tweak or two.

358 may be the one I am looking for?

Thanks to Nick, for keeping this Topic open.

Wizard

BTW Nick - I take it uninstall instructions would remain as previously described? A no answer I will take as a Yes. Thanks again.

 

 

358 may be the one I am looking for?

Actually I was looking for 359.00 to be offered, as there's been three Windows nVidia driver updates in 10 days, all to make a game playable or to fix issues. 

http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/95553/en-us

Normally when there's a Windows update, a Linux one will follow. Maybe the devs haven't gotten to it yet, but I sure hope so in the next couple of days, when I ran the command inxi -Fs, it came back as failed in bold red. 

Cat

@cat1092:

 

...when I ran the command inxi -Fs, it came back as failed in bold red.

Pardon my Asperger's I sometimes misinterpret the bleedin' obvious (Elaine would say "often/usually", lol), so briefly off-Topic, sorry Nick -

Is that from Ubuntu Mate? Or elsewhere?

If Mate, by all means set up a Topic & I will swing by there. I enjoy UM.

Wiz