Latest NVIDIA drivers on Xubuntu Edgy

This is but the first step in my attempt to run AIGLX and Beryl on Xubuntu Edgy.

I’ve already enabled AIGLX on my work PC, and it was an absolute snap. However in the end my efforts to use AIGLX and Beryl at work failed, because my PC uses an ATI card, and the fglrx driver does not support the necessary extension to run AIGLX.

My PC at home has a (an?) NVIDIA card, and the latest NVIDIA drivers do support this extension.

• Seeing as the NVIDIA drivers will write over the X.org configuration file, I’ll install the NVIDIA drivers before enabling AIGLX.

I found a nice write up (on the UDSF of all places) that can show you how to get Ubuntu packaged NVIDIA drivers to install straight to Xubuntu.

To start off you need to add an extra repository to you APT sources.list

deb http://seerofsouls.com/ edgy contrib

Then you can also grab the authentication key (I still don’t know exactly what they do)

wget http://seerofsouls.com/keys/hawkwind.asc

sudo apt-key add hawkwind.asc

Then follow this up with an update, upgrade and installation of the nvidia-glx package. The upgrade will install the re-packaged restricted-modules, which you will need.

sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude upgrade
sudo aptitude install nvidia-glx

Once the packages are installed, run the following code to set the drivers up

sudo nvidia-xconfig

It will make some changes to your X.org configuration file, hence my reason for enabling AIGLX after installing the NVIDIA drivers. When it is all done, you will need to restart your computer to allow the new modules to be loaded and you’re done!

The result is great! A nice new splash screen, and many more settings in the NVIDIA config application.