How to Install Latest NVIDIA Drivers on Ubuntu without PPA’s

[MOOSE]

I found this article on installing latest NVIDIA Drivers on Ubuntu.. if anyone interested checkout this link..

How to Install Latest NVIDIA Drivers on Ubuntu without PPA’s[noberoi.wordpress.com]

:)

[Toquita]

Terrible idea, just horrible.

1) People don't need 'ia32-libs' installed, Steam does not depend on it. Not to mention it's old.

2) I did the very same steps in the past and I was presented with either "steam.so" error or (after removing ia32-libs and Steam and re-installing everything again) that my openGL is outdated, making it impossible to run my games.

3) It's way harder to maintain a system with manually-installed drivers than with Jockey or a PPA (which by itself breaks a lot more frequent than Jockey's).

So, unless there's a super new feature which you MUST have it otherwise you can't work, stay with the older drivers, be it 319 or whatever version Ubuntu makes available via Jockey. You won't have as many headaches.

[R3450N]

Imo, the safest option to keeping your graphics drivers up-to-date is by using the packages provided by your distro and adding any PPAs like Bumblebee or xorg edgers which regardless of stability would at least maintain your drivers. Infact, even Nvidia suggests updating/installing drivers through PPAs.

[Toquita]

İlk olarak RAVEN MCCCXXXVII tarafından gönderildi:

Imo, the safest option to keeping your graphics drivers up-to-date is by using the packages provided by your distro and adding any PPAs like Bumblebee or xorg edgers which regardless of stability would at least maintain your drivers. Infact, even Nvidia suggests updating/installing drivers through PPAs.

Agreed. Although PPA's break sometimes it's much more granted to be stable with it than if you manually install your drivers.

[R3450N]

İlk olarak GNU/Linux - Junior s2 Camila tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak RAVEN MCCCXXXVII tarafından gönderildi:

Imo, the safest option to keeping your graphics drivers up-to-date is by using the packages provided by your distro and adding any PPAs like Bumblebee or xorg edgers which regardless of stability would at least maintain your drivers. Infact, even Nvidia suggests updating/installing drivers through PPAs.

Agreed. Although PPA's break sometimes it's much more granted to be stable with it than if you manually install your drivers.

Regardless, always stick to the stable stuff, unless you want to use unstable packages like on Debian.

[Toquita]

İlk olarak RAVEN MCCCXXXVII tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak GNU/Linux - Junior s2 Camila tarafından gönderildi:

Agreed. Although PPA's break sometimes it's much more granted to be stable with it than if you manually install your drivers.

Regardless, always stick to the stable stuff, unless you want to use unstable packages like on Debian.

Another agreement. I see no performance gain between the stable (304, on Debian) and 310, 313, 319 or 325.

Stable works right for me.

[Fibbs]

319.49 is the latest stable driver. 304 is, as I told you last time, the legacy branch for cards of the 7xxx series or older. For the cards that can use it, the 319 driver definitely provides a performance boost compared to the 304 driver.

[Toquita]

İlk olarak Fibbles tarafından gönderildi:

319.49 is the latest stable driver. 304 is, as I told you last time, the legacy branch for cards of the 7xxx series or older. For the cards that can use it, the 319 driver definitely provides a performance boost compared to the 304 driver.

Proof?

In most cases there's no perf gain at all.

[Fibbs]

If you want to install the Nvidia driver manually, first download it from here and place it in your Home folder:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html
(x86 for 32bit systems, x86_64 for 64bit systems)

If you're currently using an Nvidia driver from the repos, uninstall it. Your distro will now be using the Nouveau driver. We need to blacklist this before manually installing the Nvidia driver.

You'll need to create this file:

/etc/modprobe.d/disable-nouveau.conf

And paste this into it:

blacklist nouveau
options nouveau modeset=0

The easiest way to create the file is to enter this in the terminal to get a text editor with permission to write to the modprobe.d directory ('leafpad' is Xubuntu's text editor, Ubuntu's is 'gedit'):

gksudo leafpad

Now we need to make the installer file that you downloaded executable. Type this into the terminal (make sure the filename is correct and remember Linux is case sensitive):

chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-319.49.run

Now you're ready to install the driver. Reboot and hold down the Shift key, this will bring up the GRUB2 boot menu. You want to boot your distro into recovery mode, this might be listed under the advanced options. It should be self explanatory when you see it, just make sure you pick the most recent kernel version from the list (the one with the highest number).

You'll eventually be presented with the recovery menu after everything has loaded. Ubuntu based distros for some reason do not automatically mount the main partition in recovery mode. To mount the drive choose to enable networking from the recovery menu. Once that's done and you're back at the menu choose to drop to the root command prompt or drop to root shell (it's the same thing).

Now you're at the command line you'll want to log in to the user account into which you downloaded the driver installer.

login username

You'll need to enter your password to log in.

Now you need to run the installer.

sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-319.49.run

If you can't remember the name of the installer file you can use this command to list everything in your Home folder:

ls

You should now be in the Nvidia driver installer. If it says something about a script failing just ignore it and continue on. Remember to choose 'Yes' to install the 32bit compatibility binaries if you're on a 64bit system. When asked if you want to build a DKMS module choose 'Yes'.

Once the installer is finished you'll be back at the command prompt. Use this to reboot:

sudo reboot

[Fibbs]

İlk olarak GNU/Linux - Junior s2 Camila tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Fibbles tarafından gönderildi:

319.49 is the latest stable driver. 304 is, as I told you last time, the legacy branch for cards of the 7xxx series or older. For the cards that can use it, the 319 driver definitely provides a performance boost compared to the 304 driver.

Proof?

In most cases there's no perf gain at all.

Go check the last thread where you linked a bunch of benchmarks from Phoronix which didn't actually show what you thought they did. I can't be arsed hunting for it.

[Toquita]

What, these?

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTM0ODU
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_2012_review&num=3

Sometimes even the 290.xx out-performs the 319.

In most cases the driver that wins does that by 1-3 frames. There seems to be no advantage at all in most cases. In some other cases the 310 outperforms the 304.

[Fibbs]

İlk olarak GNU/Linux - Junior s2 Camila tarafından gönderildi:

What, these?

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTM0ODU
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_2012_review&num=3

Sometimes even the 290.xx out-performs the 319.

In most cases the driver that wins does that by 1-3 frames. There seems to be no advantage at all in most cases. In some other cases the 310 outperforms the 304.

Can you please actually look at what you're linking?

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_2012_review&num=3
This is from December 2012. It was done with an old build of the 310 driver and the 313 testing/beta driver. Neither are available for download anymore.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTM0ODU
This one from April 2013 shows the 304 driver to be consistently slower than everything apart from the 319.12 driver. The 319.12 was a testing/beta driver and is no longer available for download.

[Toquita]

İlk olarak Fibbles tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak GNU/Linux - Junior s2 Camila tarafından gönderildi:

What, these?

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTM0ODU
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_2012_review&num=3

Sometimes even the 290.xx out-performs the 319.

In most cases the driver that wins does that by 1-3 frames. There seems to be no advantage at all in most cases. In some other cases the 310 outperforms the 304.

Can you please actually look at what you're linking?

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_2012_review&num=3
This is from December 2012. It was done with an old build of the 310 driver and the 313 testing/beta driver. Neither are available for download anymore.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTM0ODU
This one from April 2013 shows the 304 driver to be consistently slower than everything apart from the 319.12 driver. The 319.12 was a testing/beta driver and is no longer available for download.

Those? Umm, let's see:

304 was slower at the 1st test.
Then it lost by 1 freaking frame at the 2nd test.
Then it pretty much paired with 310 and 313 on the 3nd test.
Then it lost again.

The player will most likely never notice 1 or 7 frames more. There's an improvement on this particular test, but nothing (IMO) that makes newer drivers a must have.

[Fibbs]

The 304 driver was slower in 3 out of 4 tests and equal in performance in 1 test. The numbers for the 319 driver are not accurate because they ran the benchmark with a beta version which is no longer available.

I don't see why you're so against using the latest driver. It's generally faster than the 304 legacy driver and when it isn't the performance is at least equal. More importantly, the latest driver also contains multi-threaded OpenGL support as well as having loads of bug fixes that the legacy driver doesn't receive .

[Toquita]

Depends on what "legacy" driver you're talking about. At this very day I received an update from 304.88 to 304.108. I believe Debian's devs are aware of the new features that need to be implemented and if they provide a stable but outdated driver they must keep it up with the cards' market. This is why I myself didn't notice any performance gain and I don't think that anyone should be mad because their driver performs slower by 1 or 7 frames. Obviously, if the game was to run at 20 or 13 frames than newer drivers are more than welcome, but IMO there's absolutely no need to install the latest drivers. I'm not against it, it's just that it's not needed for the vast majority of users.

[Fibbs]

Your post doesn't make any sense. The Debian devs have no control over what is contained in a closed source driver.

At this very day I received an update from 304.88 to 304.108

These are to fix critical bugs such as security flaws or to prevent system crashes. It's not the same as updates to improve behaviour with certain games. Even the ancient 173 branch receives the occasional bug fix.

This is why I myself didn't notice any performance gain and I don't think that anyone should be mad because their driver performs slower by 1 or 7 frames.

The 304 driver performed 36% worse in one of the Phoronix tests. That's quite a lot.

IMO there's absolutely no need to install the latest drivers. I'm not against it, it's just that it's not needed for the vast majority of users

The repos might not contain the latest 319 driver but they definitely contain the 310 driver which still outperforms the 304. There's absolutely no reason to recommend the legacy driver to someone over the current driver unless that is all their hardware supports.