Install Nvidia proprietary drivers in LinuxMint UPDATED 2014

[kk5000]

There is another tutorial in this forum for doing just this written in November 2012. Unfortunately it is no longer current as of the the latest NVIDIA & LinuxMint updates and will not work even if you followed it to the tee. Considing that, I decided to start a new thread giving the steps that are current as of January 02, 2014 considering these are the latest versions of the 2 players as of today :

LinuxMint 16
NVIDIA 331.20 (released November 6, 2013)

Some disclaimers before we begin :

DISCLAIMER A. This tutorial is meant for someone with a fresh installation of LinuxMint looking to install NVIDIA graphics drivers. If you already have an older version of NVIDIA drivers installed many of the steps in this tutorial may not be required for you. I advise you simply download the latest NVIDIA drivers to home/<your_user_name>/Downloads/, go to the CLI (ctrl-alt-f1) and do

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sudo apt-get purge nvidia-current

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sudo service mdm stop

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chmod +x ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*.run

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sudo sh ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*.run

and follow the prompts on the screen. That SHOULD work but I haven't tested it.
DISCLAIMER B. This is for current Nvidia graphics card support only, this will not work for legacy cards. If you have a legacy card use the "Addition Drivers" tool included in LinuxMint.
DISCLAIMER C. This also will not work on "Hybrid" (laptops that have both an Intel ow power GPU, and an Nvidia discrete/standard GPU) tose require you to use a seperate method, or change settings in you BIOS


Step by Step TUTORIAL for someone with no NVIDIA drivers begins here :

0. Open Terminal by clicking the little screen icon in your taskbar.

1. Let's identify our graphics card -

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lspci -nn | grep VGA

The output will look something like this :

04:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GK110 [GeForce GTX 780] [10de:1004] (rev a1)

My card is a GeForce GTX 780 for instance as we see above.

2. Open your browser (such as Firefox) and go to http://www.geforce.com/drivers and download the relevant drivers for your card using the "Manual driver search" drop down boxes. Ensure you select "Linux 64-bit" if you're running 64 bit Linux. By default the file will be downloaded to your user's home download folder in Firefox for instance, (/home/<your_user_name>/Download/). For the purposes of this tutorial, we're going to assume that's where you have the file.

3. Go back to the terminal we opened in step 1 and let's make the file you downloaded executable :

NOTE : Make sure you don't have any other NVIDIA installer files sitting in your /home/<your_user_name>/Downloads/ folder (same as ~/Downloads/). If you do, move or delete them prior to doing this step.

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chmod +x ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*.run

4. You'll need to leave the GUI (X) for the rest of this.

Press ctrl+alt+f1 simultaneously to open the CLI and go ahead and login.

5. Stop Mate Display Manager (MDM). This is the default display manager in LinuxMint. If you're running KDE then you will need to stop KDM.

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sudo /etc/init.d/mdm stop

6. Run the NVIDIA installer for the first time (you will be required to run it again).

NOTE : When you run the command below it will run the NVIDIA installer. Simply say "yes" or "continue" to all prompts. What we're trying to do here is blacklist (disable) the Nouveau NVIDIA driver that comes preinstalled with LinuxMint. NVIDIA's installer handles this for you as of the writing of this tutorial.

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sudo sh ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*.run

7. You now need to reboot so that the system can unload the nouveau nvidia driver module from the kernel.

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sudo reboot

8. When the system comes back on you will either not be able to get into X at all or you will be in low graphics mode. If you are unable to get into X at all and are at the login prompt skip step #9 and proceed to step #10.

9. If you are in X with low graphics mode hit ctrl-alt-f1 to get to tty1 again.

10. Login.

11. Stop Mate Display Manager (MDM) again. This is the default display manager in LinuxMint. If you're running KDE then you will need to stop KDM.

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sudo /etc/init.d/mdm stop

12. Run the following commands :

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sudo apt-get purge xserver-xorg-video-nouveau libdrm-nouveau1a nvidia*
sudo update-initramfs -u -k all

13. Reboot

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sudo reboot

14. When the system comes back on you will either not be able to get into X at all or you will be in low graphics mode. If you are unable to get into X at all and are at the login prompt skip step #15 and proceed to step #16.

15. If you are in X with low graphics mode hit ctrl-alt-f1 to get to tty1 again.

16. Login.

17. Stop Mate Display Manager (MDM) again. This is the default display manager in LinuxMint. If you're running KDE then you will need to stop KDM.

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sudo /etc/init.d/mdm stop

18. Run the NVIDIA installer for the second and final time.

NOTE : When you run the command below it will run the NVIDIA installer. Simply say "yes" or "continue" to all prompts.

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sudo sh ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*.run

19. Run Mate Display Manager (MDM). This is the default display manager in LinuxMint. If you're running KDE then you will need to run KDM.

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sudo /etc/init.d/mdm start

And that's it! You should be back in X with the latest NVIDIA drivers installed!

[crodriguez865]

Great post! I have just recently transitioned from Windows to LinuxMint 16 yesterday and have been trying to make sure that all my drivers are up to date and have seemed to run into a problem. After reading several posts on how to go about doing this I discovered that entering " inxi -Gx" returns some basic information on the graphics card, but being a noob I do not know what exactly its telling me. The output after running that code in terminal returned the following:

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Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA GF119 [GeForce GT 610] bus-ID: 01:00.0 
           X.Org: 1.14.3 drivers: (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) FAILED: nouveau Resolution: 1680x1050@59.9hz 
           GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on NVD9 GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 9.2.1 Direct Rendering: Yes

I assumed that my drivers are not up to date seeing that the driver section "FAILED". After reading your tutorial and trying to search up any recent drivers for Linux 64 bit, no drivers appeared after the search. Does this mean that my graphics card isn't compatible with linux mint and that I will not be able to update drivers? If you or anyone on this forum is willing to help that would be greatly appreciated

[Zomby Woof]

Thanks very much for this. But, after following your detailed process I am left with an 800x600 window in the middle of my 1920x1200 monitor.
I checked with the "Monitors" application and it no longer detects my HP widescreen monitor. Instead it defaults to unknown and only gives the choice of 800x600.
Perhaps you could add steps to your process to investigate and fix this issue.

I would stay with the Nouveau driver but it causes tearing when ripping DVDs with handbrake. I had none of these problems with Mint Mate 13, the Nvidia drivers installed without error and performed flawlessly.

[kk5000]

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Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA GF119 [GeForce GT 610] bus-ID: 01:00.0 
           X.Org: 1.14.3 drivers: (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) FAILED: nouveau Resolution: 1680x1050@59.9hz 
           GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on NVD9 GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 9.2.1 Direct Rendering: Yes

Does this mean that my graphics card isn't compatible with linux mint and that I will not be able to update drivers?

Your card is a GeForce GT 610. If you go to the provided driver link in the original post :

http://www.geforce.com/drivers

You can find the drivers by selecting the "manual driver search" drop down boxes as follows :

GeForce
GeForce 600 series
GeForce GT 610
Linux 64-bit

I believe the final link is :

http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/L ... 331.38.run

If you follow the steps above with these drivers you should get the latest NVIDIA drivers installed.....

[kk5000]

Thanks very much for this. But, after following your detailed process I am left with an 800x600 window in the middle of my 1920x1200 monitor.
I checked with the "Monitors" application and it no longer detects my HP widescreen monitor. Instead it defaults to unknown and only gives the choice of 800x600.
Perhaps you could add steps to your process to investigate and fix this issue.

This appears to be an issue with monitors. NVIDIA proprietary drivers have been known to cause this issue from time to time. There is an easy fix you should try first. Try "resetting" the monitor by hitting the reset button in the monitor's menu you should be able to access by using the buttons in the front of it. Once you do that check if mint has detected the monitor and offers you all the resolutions you should be able to choose from. If not, try doing the monitor reset again when you are out of x and then try starting x.

Let me know if that helps. Should that fail please provide me the output to the following command :

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xrandr

[Zomby Woof]

Tried all kinds of ways to "reset" the monitor. Made no difference.
I've reinstalled Mint and given up on the NVIDIA driver for now so I am no longer working on this.
But, xrandr only reported the 800x600 on HDMI-0. I tried to addmode but it seems that the Ubuntu line has broken that function...
That's when I gave up.

[ScottyD]

I spoke too soon. This doesn't work at all. on my system
On fresh Mint 16 install after adding nomodeset and xforcevesa to the default grub line I can boot but NVidia is not used and Cinnamon reports its using the high CPU, Which it is. But Cinnamon is running in normal mode.

I run update, one to get the latest everything and because you can't stop mdm until you do.

I then run the NVidia 331 drver installation which supports my GTX 770M card. After that cinnamon now crashes into fallback mode.

My system does have an integrated Intel video card and teh GeForce GTX 770M.

I followed the above instructions. I'm using Mint 16 Cinnamon with a GTX 770M video card.

The nvidia driver loads without errors but now Cinnamon announces it has crashed and is running in fallback mode?

thanks for help, I've been struggling for 4 hours trying to get that nvidia driver to load!

Scott

[ScottyD]

I've read that to run the hybrid Nvidia/Intel setup to use bumblebee. I do have a Nvidia and integrated intel vga card.

Is this a solution to Cinnamon crashing?

thanks,

Scott

[Vikezor]

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libdrm-nouveau1a: command not found

oh snap

[ScottyD]

Toshiba x70-A
i7-4700mq
Nvidia GTX 770M
Fresh Mint 16 Mate install.
lspci reports

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 06)
01:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK106M [GeForce GTX 770M] (rev a1)

I followed the instructions using Nvidia's NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-331.38.run installer

At the top of the xorg log file

(II) "glx" will be loaded by default.
[ 5.335] (WW) "xmir" is not to be loaded by default. Skipping.
[ 5.335] (II) LoadModule: "dri2"
[ 5.335] (II) Module "dri2" already built-in
[ 5.335] (II) LoadModule: "glamoregl"
[ 5.336] (WW) Warning, couldn't open module glamoregl
[ 5.336] (II) UnloadModule: "glamoregl"
[ 5.336] (II) Unloading glamoregl
[ 5.336] (EE) Failed to load module "glamoregl" (module does not exist, 0)
[ 5.336] (II) LoadModule: "glx"
[ 5.336] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/libglx.so
[ 5.402] (II) Module glx: vendor="NVIDIA Corporation"
[ 5.402] compiled for 4.0.2, module version = 1.0.0
[ 5.402] Module class: X.Org Server Extension
[ 5.402] (II) NVIDIA GLX Module 331.38 Wed Jan 8 19:10:17 PST 2014
[ 5.403] Loading extension GLX
[ 5.403] (II) LoadModule: "nvidia"
[ 5.403] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.so
[ 5.408] (II) Module nvidia: vendor="NVIDIA Corporation"
[ 5.408] compiled for 4.0.2, module version = 1.0.0
[ 5.409] Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[ 5.409] (II) NVIDIA dlloader X Driver 331.38 Wed Jan 8 18:51:00 PST 2014
[ 5.409] (II) NVIDIA Unified Driver for all Supported NVIDIA GPUs
[ 5.409] (++) using VT number 7

[ 5.413] (EE) No devices detected.
[ 5.413] (==) Matched intel as autoconfigured driver 0
[ 5.413] (==) Matched vesa as autoconfigured driver 1
[ 5.413] (==) Matched modesetting as autoconfigured driver 2
[ 5.413] (==) Matched fbdev as autoconfigured driver 3
[ 5.413] (==) Assigned the driver to the xf86ConfigLayout
[ 5.413] (II) LoadModule: "intel"
[ 5.413] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/intel_drv.so
[ 5.414] (II) Module intel: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[ 5.414] compiled for 1.14.3, module version = 2.99.904
[ 5.414] Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[ 5.414] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 14.1

the nvidia driver loads but right below the load, " (EE) No devices detected." is that refering to the nvidia card?

further on...

[ 5.530] (EE) Failed to initialize GLX extension (Compatible NVIDIA X driver not found)

runing lsmod shows the nvidia driver is not loaded.

however running

scott@scott-Qosmio-X70-A ~ $ sudo modprobe nvidia
[sudo] password for scott:
scott@scott-Qosmio-X70-A ~ $ lsmod
Module Size Used by
nvidia 10675220 0

obviously 'modprobe nvidia' loads the driver?

Below is most of the xorg log as there are a couple other places the nvidia driver is mentioned.

What am I missing?

[clamp_b]

I am not able to blacklist the nouveau,intel driver.
I followed all steps correctly, ran the nvidia driver setup it asked me to blacklist the nouveau,intel driver.
After reboot, I get the normal resolution but the setup can't continue..
Please Help !!! This is the 3rd day I am trying to install the driver..

[mint16]

I am with two video cards (Intel+ Nvidia) and i cannot decrease the screen brightness.PLease help me guys, i am going crazy...

[mint16]

I am with KDE, please tell me how to stop th default display,pleaaaaase

[mweishaa]

Wow. This is the first time - EVER - I have updated my nvidia drivers with no problems. I've been through the update hell many times, I've used NVIDIA cards since about 2000, and have been running Linux since 1998. I was mentally prepared (as much as I could be) to upgrade my drivers and had set aside a few hours to do it. It literally took me longer to type this post than to upgrade them. I have a home-built system running Mint 15 XFCE 64-bit with an Nvidia GT240 card running @ 1680x1050 and using the 304 driver. The Mint driver manager recommended an updated but not the latest version, so I wanted to get the latest one I could. For me, that was 331. I had also saved this post off as a txt file just in case I needed it.

1. Downloaded NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-331.38.run
2. CTRL+ALT+F1 and logged in
3. sudo service mdm stop
4. sudo apt-get purge nvidia-current
5. sudo apt-get purge nvidia-304* (I did this just to be sure as it was still installed)
6. chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-331.38.run
7. sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-331.38.run
Ansered Yes to all prompts, including the first one that asked to continue after the distro pre-install check had failed.
8. sudo service mdm start

That was it! To be sure, I rebooted. All was fine, checked the driver... perfect. I don't know if Nvidia is to thank, or if it is the awesomeness of Mint, but I am very happy!

[mweishaa]

I am with KDE, please tell me how to stop th default display,pleaaaaase

It has been a while since I used KDE, but I think it should be

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sudo service kdm stop

To restart it, replace "stop" with "start"

[luick]

Just followed the instructions for my Geforce gt610, the whole process took less than 15 minutes and worked like a charm ! I was stuck with a 1024*768 resolution with the nouveau driver and struggled with other solutions for a day and a half... but now everything seems right. Thanks a lot !

[Lvcoyote]

Is this what you should see when looking at driver manager after installing 331.23 ???

[ridobe]

Is this what you should see when looking at driver manager after installing 331.23 ???

I think it's inxi -Gx to see your drivers being used. If that's not it use inxi -F. That will show you everything.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[Lvcoyote]

Yea, that shows 331.38 being used, was just a little concerned that it didn't show anything in driver manager.
Thanks!

[Lvcoyote]

I posted that image above right after installing the drivers, but unfortunately when I restarted the system things went to hell. I ended up in an endless loop of Cinnamon crashing, so in the end this method completely hosed my Mint install. Luckily I created a system image before attempting the NVIDIA driver update, so I'm back where I was before attempting this..... Whew!

Let's hope NVIDIA gets their crap in a pile one day and makes driver installation a lot less painful!
Thanks for the effort anyway ----
Cheers!