How to install and activate NVIDIA drivers without Jockey?

Short and precise: I would like to install and activate the most recent proprietary NVIDIA drivers from the repositories without using Jockey. How can I do that?

Solution 1:

If you decide you want to install the NVidia driver from the .run file provided on the NVidia website:

Getting the Driver

1. Put in information about your video card.
2. Review the license and release information (this page will be different, for different video cards, and different CPU's - 32-bit vs. 64-bit).
3. Download the driver (also different!).

These .run files are shell scripts with binary data embedded in them. Thus they cannot be treated as text files, even though shell scripts usually are text files. If your web browser tries to display their contents as text:

• You can try right-clicking on the download link ("Agree & Download") and clicking Save Link As....

• You can download with wget, a download utility that tends to be smarter about these things than most web browsers. To do this, right-click on the download link, click Copy Link Address (or Copy Link Location) and pass it to the wget command. For example:

  wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/304.64/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-304.64.run
  

Installing the Driver

You cannot install by double-clicking on the .run file. You don't want to open the file in a text editor (most of it isn't plain text anyway, so you'll see all those red escapes like in the screenshot you showed us). Furthermore, to run successfully, it must be marked as executable and the GUI must be turned off.

Once you have the .run file, quit all running programs, log out, and switch to a virtual console (by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1.

1. Log in by entering your username and password as prompted. As you enter your password in the Terminal (here and later), it won't look like anything is happening--no placeholder characters like * will appear

2. Go to wherever you downloaded the driver. For example: cd ~/Downloads

   (The ~/ part represents you home folder, and can usually be left out.)

   If you want, you can actually download the driver now with wget. But the advantage of downloading it from a Terminal window is that you can paste the name in from your web browser.

3. See the name of the driver: ls *.run

4. Mark it executable: chmod +x *.run

   (If there's more than one .run file, you may want to specify the whole filename, so as to make just the right one executable.)

5. Quit the GUI: sudo stop lightdm

6. Run the driver installer with sudo (it must be installed as root) and ./, for example:

   sudo ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-304.64.run
   

   After ./, you can just type the first few characters, then press Tab and the shell will guess the filename for you.

   You'll then be prompted for more information and the installer will attempt to install the driver.

7. After installing the driver you'll likely have to reboot for it to work (sudo reboot or Ctrl+Alt+Delete).

   But if you want to try reloading the GUI, you can do so: sudo start lightdm

   This might not be necessary, but you can try switching back to the GUI with Alt+F7.

Solution 2:

In terminal you can install nvidia drivers by typing the following:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

Solution 3:

There are different ways by which you can install Nvidia drivers on to your system. Before installing by any of the method it is recommended that whether your Nvidia card supports " optimus " Technology. you can see if it supports Optimus technology by following command

lspci | grep VGA 

Output:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev ##)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Device #### (rev ##)

If your output is something like this that, it shows both intel and nvidia controller it means your nvidia card supports Optimus technology and you have to follow different method to install nvidia drivers.

if your output shows only nvidia compatible controller then you can install latest drivers on your system by just one command in terminal code:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

if you want to activate your drivers follow these steps

1. Go to System settings
2. click on additional drivers
3. select the nvidia driver and click on activate (your driver will be downloaded and activated).
4. reboot your system

if you have optimus technology supported nvidia card, you can install nvidia drivers by using "bumblebee". The details of what is bumblebee and how to install drivers can be found on these links.

1. What is Optimus Technology

2. Install nvidia drivers with bumblebee