grungy_me wrote:Firstly upon running the Nvidia proprietary graphic card installation, the first message I got was:
The distribution-provided pre-install script failed! Are you sure you want to continue?
I opted to continue and the installation went normal as far as I can tell as a first timer doing this type of installer. Meaning there was no obvious error messages beyond this one that I could tell. Do I have any reason to be concerned even though the tests with the three games and glxgears worked fine?
You can ignore that message. After the installation, if you check the "nvidia-installer.log" file located in "/var/log", it says that the distribution-provided pre-install script is located in "/usr/lib/nvidia". When you open that "pre-script" file, it will be empty.
Since you had to switch to Recovery Mode, then you didn't get to read the rest of the installation instructions for a tty1 installation. Then you would have read the instruction to answer yes at every screen.
I also opted not to include DKMS. My understanding is that by not including it, if the level 3 updates ever update the kernel I'd have to re-install the Nvidia driver from scratch just like I did today? Am I correct about this? Would it be worth my while to uninstall and re-install the driver with DKMS included?
A minor kernel update through the update manager will not have any effect on the Nvidia driver installation, such as going from the installed kernel 3.13.0-24.46 to 3.13.0-24.47.
A major kernel upgrade, such as going from kernel 3.13 to 3.14 or higher will require reinstalling the driver. You should not have to do this. Since Mint 17 has long term support, you won't have to worry about a major kernel upgrade until 2019. But if you're concerned about it, then just run through the installation again in tty1. All you need to do is:
Enter tty1 and log in. Then run these commands:
sudo service mdm stop
sudo sh N-340.32.run
sudo service mdm start
The installed Nvidia driver is automatically removed and then reinstalled.
I also opted to use the included libvdpau and libvdpau_trace libraries that come with the driver. But noticed during the install that the driver puts up an informational message saying that it is better to get these libraries from the package manager of your distribution. Do I have reason to be concerned since I didn't do this?
The driver installation will fail if you don't let those two packages be installed by the Nvidia installer. I have already tested an installation where I first installed them in the Synaptic Package Manager and then didn't have the Nvidia installer install them, but the installation failed. Evidently there is some difference in the packages, whether all the files in the packages are not identical or there is a version difference.
But this whole procedure makes me have a fine appreciation for how easy it is to install the AMD proprietary graphics driver. One terminal command from the desktop brings up the graphical GUI, run through the prompts, re-boot and then you are done. Too bad the performance of the AMD graphics cards and driver are not up to par with Nvidia.
If you had been able to use tty1 for the installation, then the steps would have been:
Install the package “libc6-dev”
Create the “disable-nouveau.conf” file, add 2 lines to it, and then run:
sudo update-initramfs -u
Reboot and enter tty1 to run these commands:
sudo service mdm stop
sudo sh N-331.run
sudo service mdm start
Two of those commands are to stop and start the display manager. Also, the package “libc6-dev” was already installed up through Mint 15, but for some unknown reason, the Mint developers removed it in Mint 16 and 17, although it gets installed with any Nvidia driver installation using Driver Manager, Synaptic or apt-get. So Nvidia can't be blamed entirely on lengthy installation procedures.