Fix nouveau driver issues on Ubuntu 12.04 / 12.10, install NVIDIA drivers

I’ve had serious issues getting lightdm on Ubuntu 12.04 to work with my NVIDIA GTX580 graphics card.

The problem is related to the OSS nouveau driver that comes bundled with lightdm on Ubuntu 12.04 / 12.10. The nouveau driver by default is used instead of the proprietary NVIDIA closed source driver.

Someone in the forums resolved this by simply removing lightdm, but imo that’s not the right way since lightdm is nice!

So how do we get the NVIDIA driver up and running on Ubuntu 12.04 / 12.10?

It’s easy:

sudo apt-get --purge remove xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current
sudo update-alternatives --config gl_conf
#64 bit only!
#sudo update-alternatives --config x86_64-linux-gnu_gl_conf
sudo ldconfig
sudo update-initramfs -u
sudo nvidia-xconfig

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libdrm/+bug/990411
• http://askubuntu.com/questions/126193/12-04-stuck-at-the-login-screen
• http://www.noobslab.com/2011/09/nvidia-drivers-for-ubuntu-1110-oneiric.html

Benjamin Wiedmann

Benjamin Wiedmann is an IT Professional, Software Developer, Photograph and Musician. Read more...

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