Ubuntu – Nvidia driver doesn’t work in 12.10

12.10nvidiaxorg

I have GeForce GTX 560 Ti. I's worked fine in 12.04 with nvidia drivers. Unfortunately, after todays 12.10 update, something broke down.

I've tried nvidia-current, nvidia-current-updates and nvidia-experimantal. Always the same behaviour: Bad resolution in lightdm, after logging nothing except wallpaper. No unity panels, "win" key doesn't work.

After removing nvidia drivers everything work.

Best Answer

Before switching to the nvidia drivers you need to install linux-source and linux-headers (see bug 1068341). After the source is installed, try switching to the nvidia drivers.

Here is how:

Before you start, install all updates (and reboot the computer, if you are told to).

  1. Switch to a terminal (Ctrl-Alt-F1).

  2. Login as your username.

  3. Install linux source (sudo apt-get install linux-source) and headers (sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic).

  4. Uninstall nvidia driver - this depends on which version you installed (sudo apt-get remove nvidia-current or sudo apt-get remove nvidia-current-updates or sudo apt-get remove nvidia-experimental-304).

  5. Reinstall nvidia driver (sudo apt-get install nvidia-current-updates).

  6. If it successfully installs, restart the computer (sudo shutdown -r now).

More In-depth How-to

The following link gives a more in-depth overview on how to handle the nvidia driver. It should be applicable to more cases, that are similar, but not exactly the same as the one described here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia

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