I've seen and followed at least 8 guides to getting Nvidia's proprietary drivers working with ubuntu.
Here are a list of answers and guides that I have tried (about twice each) that do not work.
- Correct nvidia+intel graphics setup in 14.04 That fixed the GLX error, but I'm clearly watching movies on my CPU. The CPU monitor goes through the roof and the video takes a while to skip around. Also, "glxspheres not found" is what I get when I try the "glxspheres" command. So I guess it "fixes the error" in the sense that it disables the graphics card and leaves a bunch of software that appear to "cancel each other out" on your system.
- https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia This leads to the screen randomly freezing. Oddly enough, I appear to never "loose control" of the keyboard and mouse. It's just that the screen randomly decides to stop updating. Upon switching the screen off and on, I've found that my futile efforts to move the mouse and type on the keyboard did do something, it was just that the screen stopped updating.
- How do I install the Nvidia driver for a GeForce GT 630 I tried installing the packages from apt-get, but it just repeatedly tells me to configure xorg. No matter how many times I run nvidia-xconfig and/or reboot, this problem persists.
- http://www.binarytides.com/install-nvidia-drivers-ubuntu-14-04/ Be warned abou the xorg-edgers ppa. It has proved to have the same effect as the "add restricted drivers" approach on the official guide in that it just leads to the screen randomly not updating. However it leaves your system a mess when you try to get rid of the drivers it installs. A lot of stuff gets upgraded when adding the xorg-edgers repository and it becomes a nightmare to bring your system back.
- Install Nvidia driver instead nouveau As nearest I can tell the blacklist step does exactly nothing, other than create a new text file in an obscure directory so you can check it off your list of things to try.
- How to install NVIDIA.run? I've tried the "use the run file from nvidia's official website" several times over the course of a year now. As of 6 months ago, it used to produce that annoying screen freezing problem. As of today, it just gives me the old "GLX not found" error.
- http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1741783 Installing mesa packages does not get rid of the "GLX not found" even though the packages does contain the phrase "GLX".
- Install dkms. I can't find the askubuntu answer that involved apt-get install dkms, but that does not produce any noticeable effect either.
So after compiling this series of dead ends, I was hoping someone might be able to either tell me of a new means of getting my graphics card to work, or confirm that there is no known solution to this problem.
Obviously, I would be thrilled if someone knows of a "tried and true" way to do it. I am admittedly frustrated by all of these lengthy proposed fixes that never solve the problem.
I am currently typing this question on an ASUS laptop that, according to the sticker under my left wrist, says it contains a "Nvidia Geforce GTX 960M" graphics card.
Another possibility is that I actually had installed the graphics cards at some point, and I misdiagnosed slow rendering for an insufficient graphics card (I sometimes render 3D volumetric data with mayavi) for ill configured graphics drivers. Though I doubt that since I have always confirmed my suspicions when I found the CPU work monitor skyrocketed as I attempted to rotate the 3D image. Also, my nvidia settings manager has never actually confirmed a working graphics card--often complaining about an ill-configured xorg settings ("We're sorry, the graphics card you are trying to reach is not available, please run nvidia-xconfig and try again") or failing to exist entirely (then I install it, and it resumes complaints about incorrect xorg settings).
