[LAU] Ubuntu-Studio 13.04 Nvidia drivers?

[John Murphy]

On Wed, 13 Feb 2013 11:41:06 -1000, david wrote:

> On 02/13/2013 10:58 AM, John Murphy wrote:
> > I've installed Ubuntu Studio 13.04. It has a real time version
> > of the latest kernel and I quite like the XFCE desktop, although
> > I'm more used to KDE. It boots from Grub in about seven seconds,
> > which is remarkable.
> >
> > But I use one installation for all and I really need proprietary
> > Nvidia drivers. Preferably version 310. I've tried installing
> > 'nvidia-current' which provides v304, but doesn't work. An 'apport'
> > problem is mentioned in the (Synaptic) details during install and
> > the 'Nvidia Settings' widget reports no working driver installed
> > and to try running 'sudo nvidia-config' (or something like that)
> > which I tried. Even tried copying a known good xorg.conf from my
> > currently working KDE (12.04). On a previous attempt I tried most
> > variations of 310 and something from an xorg-edgers ppa.
> 
> Perhaps the closed driver needs to be installed when X is not running? 
> Try from a text login?

A good suggestion, thank you, but no difference unfortunately.
I stopped the display manager (lightdm) from a virtual terminal
and tried 'sudo apt-get install nvidia-310-dev'. It worked, but
still no working driver according to nvidia-settings. After running
nvidia-config I'm limited to 640x480, which doesn't help.

> > I've had similar problems before, requiring various blacklisting
> > of Nouveau and certain framebuffer drivers, but before I try that;
> > is there some other possible reason why ubuntu-studio 13.04 or
> > XFCE isn't likely to work with (closed) nvidia drivers?
> 
> XFCE shouldn't care a bit about which video driver you use; it's just 
> using X. I've used XFCE on closed NVidia drivers (not the version you're 
> talking about) without any problems. Installed them using Synaptic with 
> no problems.

That's what I would have expected. Possibly the 'studio' parts are
causing the problem then (in that I probably don't have the right
linux-headers or something similar).

> Can't answer for Ubuntu 13, though. Ubuntu's Unity interface tries to do 
> what I consider fancy stuff for the desktop UI, so it might be more 
> sensitive to drivers. (Like KDE4 in that area, I think.)

I tried Ubuntu 13.04 between attempts with the studio version. It would
only boot to a rescue 'low graphics' mode, which turned out to be just
a login prompt, but I was able to update and then install nvidia-current
OK on that and it worked fine on the next reboot.

> But I think if you can't even get X to run the driver in the first place 
> (boot to a text login, login and run "startx"), you haven't even gotten 
> to the point where XFCE or the Ubuntu UI is trying to use it.

Just downloaded a daily build of Xubuntu 13.04. I'll try starting
from there. All of these Raring-Ringtail installs are a bit awkward
for me, as there's a bug which means I have to disconnect all HDDs
bar the one on which I'm going to install. :|

Thanks.
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