Configuring a NVIDIA graphics chip for Ubuntu 8.04

Bill Giannikos

This guide will help you configure the proprietary nvidia module under Ubuntu 8.04. I will not be covering the open source nv module included with Xorg because its configuration is normally handled automatically by most Linux distributions.

NVIDIA provide their own license for their driver. You will need to read and accept this license before proceeding. You can read this license here.

While this guide is mainly focused to laptop users there isn't any difference for desktop users.

You should run a full update for your installation of Ubuntu to ensure you have all the latest packages installed.

Ubuntu 8.04 includes the NVIDIA driver which makes installation quite easy. Here is how:

1. Launch the “Restricted Devices Manager” program from the menu System → Administration → Restricted Devices Manager

2. Enable to NVIDIA driver

3. Reboot

Like many things in Ubuntu this is nice and easy.

If you are unable to launch the GUI and are forced to install the driver from the text console follow these instructions.

1. Type in the following:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx-new
sudo nvidia-xconfig

2. Reboot

Again this is fairly easy. Please note that this will install version 169.12 of the NVIDIA driver. If you have a older graphic chip and this newer driver doesn't support it you can replace “nvidia-glx-new” in the above command with “nvidia-glx” or for even older chips with “nvidia-glx-legacy”.

If you need or would like to install the latest NVIDIA driver then you can use the excellent Envy installation program. This will fetch the latest NVIDIA driver and compile it for your system automatically.

Normally after installing the nvidia driver with the steps above your xorg.conf file should have automatically been updates to use the newer driver. If this did not happen or for some reason it has reverted then enter the following command:

sudo nvidia-xconfig

This will switch you back to the nvidia driver.