Difficulty installing Driver from NVidia.com

[Krisalex79]

Hello, i have a difficulty

I am running Linux Mint 20.2 with Cinnamon, i want to install the latest Nvidia Quadro driver taken directly from NVidia's site. The problem is every time i tried to install the driver i get error that X-Server is running, and this prevents the driver to install. Please assist me with steps or workaround that work and will allow me to perform the actions i want. I start the installer by opening a terminal, type sudo and drag the NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-470.86.run file on the terminal effectively executing the file with root privileges.

My hardware is:

Lenovo ThinkStation D20

Chipset:
Intel X58, based on IOH 5520 and ICH 10

CPU:
Dual Intel Xeon X5690

RAM:
96 gb DDR3 1333, Registered ECC Multibit error correcting ram, 48 gb per CPU

GPU:
Nvidia Quadro P2200, currently running some "Proprietary Nvidia driver" from repositories, i prefer the authentic genuine driver sourced from NVidia also the driver from NVidia website is newer, and i prefer the newer driver.

Sound:
EVGA NU Audio Pro, here i would like to ask for a decent driver, but this will be on another topic, please lets focus on the Quadro P2200, because the Quadro is the important hardware, the sound can wait for another day.

Monitor:
Dual monitors Dell Ultra Sharp 2410 D, connected Via display ports to the Quadro P2200.

[SMG]

GPU:
Nvidia Quadro P2200, currently running some "Proprietary Nvidia driver" from repositories, i prefer the authentic genuine driver sourced from NVidia also the driver from NVidia website is newer, and i prefer the newer driver.

Welcome to the forum, Krisalex79.

There is an open-source xorg-nouveau driver available for Nvidia GPUs or one uses the proprietary drivers which come from Nvidia.

Proprietary means the driver is Nvidia's code. It is the authentic genuine driver from Nvidia. It is packaged in the repositories so it works properly with the other files inDebian/Ubuntu/Mint. If you check the Additional Information tab on the Nvidia driver web page it indicates:

Note that many Linux distributions provide their own packages of the NVIDIA Linux Graphics Driver in the distribution's native package management format. This may interact better with the rest of your distribution's framework, and you may want to use this rather than NVIDIA's official package.

What driver version do you currently have installed and what "newer" driver do you want to use? There are PPA's available which probably have the newer driver. There are several advantages to using them the PPAs including automatically being updated when new drivers are available and being much easier to install.

[shoaibiqbal123]

You can get it manually, but the new version don't have many changes