How does the NVIDIA driver in Kubuntu work?

[fidesratioque]

When I go into 'Hardware Drivers' I'm given the option to install the 180 NVIDIA proprietary driver. How come I can't do this in a distro like Fedora? It seems really convenient. I was just trying this out today. I'm certainly glad it works so easily in Kubuntu.

[integr8e]

Re: How does the NVIDIA driver in Kubuntu work?

Ubuntu has several applications that are specific to its distribution, and the Hardware Drivers utility is one of them; many distributions include custom engineered software that is especially tailored to assist their users with common tasks, and unfortunately, many of those applications are not redistributed within the Linux community (this being a good example).

[Teunis]

Re: How does the NVIDIA driver in Kubuntu work?

Red Hat is more anal about proprietary stuff than some flavours of Ubuntu.

[dibl]

Re: How does the NVIDIA driver in Kubuntu work?

unfortunately, many of those applications are not redistributed within the Linux community (this being a good example).

Well, I assume (without checking) that Canonical offers the jockey source code under GPL -- right? So it's not as though they're preventing anyone, including Red Hat, from taking it and using it if they want to. Perhaps more to the point, my own experience with jockey-kde is that it just doesn't work half the time (or more). I'm not a programmer and don't have the skills to diagnose exactly what's not happening correctly, when it fails. But, being a pragmatist I can just download and install the nVidia driver that I want and get the result I need, so that's the path of least resistance/least waste of time.

[fidesratioque]

Re: How does the NVIDIA driver in Kubuntu work?

unfortunately, many of those applications are not redistributed within the Linux community (this being a good example).

Well, I assume (without checking) that Canonical offers the jockey source code under GPL -- right? So it's not as though they're preventing anyone, including Red Hat, from taking it and using it if they want to. Perhaps more to the point, my own experience with jockey-kde is that it just doesn't work half the time (or more). I'm not a programmer and don't have the skills to diagnose exactly what's not happening correctly, when it fails. But, being a pragmatist I can just download and install the nVidia driver that I want and get the result I need, so that's the path of least resistance/least waste of time.

How would I go about installing such a driver in Linux?

Sorry if this seems hopelessly naive. :P

[dibl]

Re: How does the NVIDIA driver in Kubuntu work?

Well, don't feel bad -- it wasn't that long ago that I was blundering in the weeds and re-installing every 10 minutes.

OK, this was written assuming only a little bit of basic understanding of your system:

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...4892#msg164892

The current released nVidia driver is 185.18.14, and the current Beta is 190.18, as announced here:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=122606

I installed the beta version 190.16 and it's still running OK, but I should upgrade to that newer one.

[Nakrull]

Re: How does the NVIDIA driver in Kubuntu work?

thks dibl
u fixed my 8800gts issue
i recently installed kubu on my new old pc
amd x2 4600 soket939 asrock 2gbmem
i overcloked my old core to te point of no return
so i had to run all over the place to get a 939 cpu
since there are very few still out there and i dint wanted to get a new MB

[dibl]

Re: How does the NVIDIA driver in Kubuntu work?

Oh geez -- yeah, I overclock my X6800 pretty hard (to 3.45GHz), but it seems to take it with no problem. Runs a little warm -- idles in the low 50s, but hey -- what's a CPU for, anyway?

[Nakrull]

Re: How does the NVIDIA driver in Kubuntu work?

got me there lol but i over overclocked mine and the cooling failed while i was playing mass effect at 8x aa af and quality it was a single core so i didnt want to but i had too lol

and it surely jumped from the 52 to 100 and more in less than a minute
then black and it didn't boot anymore
after 3 hours bios booted but that was it
all kinds of gibberish popping up at least i was great full my motherboard didn't die too

stupid win it dint warn me normal it should prevent that from happening but i cant figure why it didn't
i once overclocked my cpu in linux and it did a nice kernel panic when it went too hot
i know it normally a bis thing but

wow ok i went on rambling in the wrong topic lol cheers thaks again dibl

[integr8e]

Re: How does the NVIDIA driver in Kubuntu work?

unfortunately, many of those applications are not redistributed within the Linux community (this being a good example).

Well, I assume (without checking) that Canonical offers the jockey source code under GPL -- right? So it's not as though they're preventing anyone, including Red Hat, from taking it and using it if they want to.
...

Indeed, @dibl. Looking at the quoted portion of my post, I see how it can be interpreted to claim many distros develop closed-source, proprietary software, but that was not my intent -- I was making a statement that, based on my experiences, although distros develop great, user-centric applications, they are rarely ported to other distributions, which I believe is due to political, prideful reasons (i.e. "we didn't engineer it, so we don't want it"). I'm a big fan of unity, and believe users will choose distributions based on their merits and ideologies (assuming they research them), but do see how commercial distros like Ubuntu, Red Hat / Fedora, and openSUSE would not benefit competitively if they began sharing resources. I reckon this is the price we have to pay for their ever-so-slight diversity :P

Well, don't feel bad -- it wasn't that long ago that I was blundering in the weeds and re-installing every 10 minutes.

I miss the good old days

[Nakrull]

Re: How does the NVIDIA driver in Kubuntu work?

ha i see what u mean now its like a capital crime to reinstall every 10 min lol
but i still make a clean install every dist upgrade
so i can get a nice feeling of the "new" basics and thus avoid carrying errors to my new kubu