Stuck installing nVidia 304 drivers on Mint 14 MATE

[dogsolitude_uk]

Hi Guys, hope someone can help.

I've recently installed Mint 14 on an old PC: formatted drive, installed and it's fine, but I wanted it to use the nVidia drivers instead of Nouveau so I could check Steam out on it. I'm still finding my way with Mint and Linux, so apologies if some of this is a bit n00bish... Problem is, when one's a n00b one doesn't know what one doesn't know! Thing is, I'm still at a level of (in)competence where I have to follow instructions off the web, but I'm not always clued up enough to know *exactly* what I'm doing, so it only takes a tiny variation between my setup and circumstances and those of the author to completely kybosh my attempts to get stuff done!

Ubuntu had an application where you could download and choose which drivers you used. I've not found anything similar on Mint in MATE, so I had a crack at the following approaches.

Getting .run file from nVidia and running it
1 - Downloaded .run file from nVidia website, renamed it to nvidia.run for command-line convenience
2 - Tried running it off the command line with 'sudo sh', but it complained that X was running
3 - Tried to stop X, couldn't find any precise instructions on how to do this, variously tried ctrl-alt-f1 (didn't work), ctrl-alt-backspace (which reset the desktop and chucked me back to the login), sudo service gdm stop (wrong service), and eventually 'sudo service mdm stop'
4 - I understood the resulting command-line environment to be 'ttf' (or something), a sort of interface layer that somehow sits 'underneath' X and therefore 'underneath' MATE.
5 - Tried 'sudo sh nvidia.run' This looked promising.
6 - "The distribution-provided preinstall script has failed. Continue installation anyway?" Ah. What does this mean?

Using apt-get
1 - Opened command line
2 - 'sudo apt-get update'
3 - 'sudo service mdm stop'
4 - 'sudo apt-get install nvidia-current' - looking good...
5 - 'sudo nvidia-xconfig' -
6 - 'sudo service mdm start'
7 - I try running nVidia X-Server settings, but I get told that 'You do not appear to be using the nVidia X driver.' and that I should run 'nvidia-xconfig' as root and restart the server. I thought I'd done this?

Is there an easy way of telling which drivers my computer *is* using?
Should I remove the existing drivers? If so, how do I do this?
In particular, is there a command along the lines of 'sudo just-use-the-nVidia-drivers-and-get-on-with-it-please'?
If I've made a mess of things (highly likely!) is there anything I should do to 'clean up'?

There's a bunch of n00by assumptions in the above, and in any case I've probably missed a whole boatload of stuff, but can anyone give me any pointers? As a gamer I'm used to uninstalling drivers and updating them in Windows, however on Linux it seems to be rather opaque.

EDIT: I think I'm sorted now, found out through reading the release notes that the 'Additional Drivers' bit was now inside the Software Sources tool. From the Release Notes it says:

"Additional drivers

To install additional drivers, please run the "Software Sources" tool from "Menu->Preferences->Software Sources" and click on the "Additional Drivers" tab. The tool used in previous versions of Linux Mint (Jockey) was discontinued upstream in Ubuntu."

This appears to have worked ok for me.

Mods, please feel free to delete post. I left it up here in case anyone else got stuck because they didn't RTFM

Anyone else, if you have any comments or info regarding best practise for dealing with graphics drivers I'd be grateful! As Steam is coming to Linux, I can see that updating drivers etc may prove to be a bit of a barrier to new users migrating from Windows, and the whole ATI/nVidia thing takes on a whole new meaning in Linux-land. It certainly confuses the heck out of me.

[McLovin]

I have a tutorial on how to manually instal the nvidia drivers located here http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=117643 that walks you through step by step

[nomko]

It was easier to add the PPA of x-swat:

The following are all terminal commands!

Code: Select all

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates

This add's the PPA of x-swat to your sources. Source of the PPA: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat/+a ... es_filter=

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get update

This updates all the packages.

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get upgrade

This will upgrade your system with the latest packages and installs the x-swat nVidia driver. Another advantage is that updates for the nVidia driver will be installed when you update your system through Update Manager or the terminal command sudo -apt-get upgrade. I've seen multiple times that manually installed drivers must be updated.....manually. This gives you the same headache as you have now.

[dogsolitude_uk]

Thank you both very much!

McLovin: I actually found your tutorial: it looked by far the most useful and comprehensive, and I actually started following it (this was my first attempt, getting the .run file from nVidia and getting it to run) but had to 'diverge' from your instructions a bit in order to get to TTF (ctrl-alt-f1 didn't work) and stop X (I used 'sudo service mdm stop'). I got as far as step 6, but eventually ended up with the "The distribution-provided preinstall script has failed. Continue installation anyway?" error, and wasn't sure what to do. This wasn't due to any error or omission on the part of your tutorial though! I noticed that further down the comments thread you recommend hitting 'continue'.

nomko: I'm well in favour of anything that automates things! Thanks for the ppa advice.

This is great, I can actually fee my brain growing the more I use Linux. I guess this is part of the appeal!