How to Install Nvidia Video Drivers In 10.04 Lucid Lynx

New releases of any kind of software tend to bring what could be called "New Releases of Bugs".  Luckily it's actually not that drastic, I just try to be clever too often.  But one thing that seems to have been catching everyone off guard is loading up the Nvidia drivers with their new Ubuntu 10.04 installations. So, below are the steps to get your Nvidia video card running on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx LTS.

*Update* 5/11/2010 I was able to finally replicate this on a machine a day ago. When I installed nvidia-current I received the error that the nvidia kernel couldn't install or compile. Strange, I thought. But after a moment I realized I had just ran the auto update in ubuntu. Sure enough a new kernel was installed. After reinstalling build-essential and linux-headers-`uname -r` the nvidia install went perfect. So if you are having issues reinstall your compiling tool set and then attempt the install again.

$ sudo aptitude install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r'

$ sudo apt-get purge nvidia*

blacklist nouveau

$ sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

$ sudo modprobe nvidia-current

$ sudo lsmod | grep -i nvidia

$ sudo nvidia-xconfig

1. Open your favorite terminal (ie. Applications->Accessories->Terminal) and uninstall any and all nvidia components installed.
2. Next we need to blacklist "nouveau".  Do so by adding the following into /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf with your favorite text editor.
3. Install the latest official stable driver from the repository
4. Next we'll load the Nvidia kernel module
5. Verify it's successful entry via lsmod like so
6. And one last step, we must create the Nvidia configuration file.

There, all better?  Let me know if it worked well for you, and if not I'll do my best to help!

Tags: 10.04 lynx nouvea nvidia nvidia drivers ubuntu xconfig