Easiest route to installing latest nvidia drivers?

H

Hornswoggler

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I am open to whichever distro and/or process makes this the easiest. What is the shortest number of steps one could take to install the latest nvidia video drivers on Linux? Are there packages out there (and if so, for which distros?)

I installed Fedora 8 today.. only to get caught in some of the ugliest steps I have ever taken to install a driver. Still have not updated it, need some crazy libraries or something. I'll try again and write down the error I get.

What are some suggestions? I dont mind reinstalling with a different distro if it would be easier. I want to play Cultris on the machine to see if its any more responsive than on windows.
 
Figured it out on Fedora. Had to install gcc or cc... so I checked off every package that might have contained gcc (and there was a lot of them). Problem solved but solution still cloudy. oh well.
 
I think downloading the file from Nvidia and installing it that way is the easiest to be honest.
 
Surprised noone mentioned it yet, but the easiest and safest way is most definately Envy.
 
distro specific...

For an up and running system Gentoo w.r.t. such upgrades has to be the easiest

the daily/weekly emerge --sync && emerge world -uvDa does it all for you easy!

if however (like at the moment) the drivers in the tree are lagging behind official a simple copy of the ebuild file & rename (such to reflect the driver version) and ebuild/emerge and its all sorted


I try to help out on the SplashDamage forums w.r.t. linux and QuakeWars and the number of posts regarding nvidia/ati driver upgrades is alot. All with convoluted steps to upgrade (if repo-drivers out of date) and all compounded by the fact that their distro doesn't provide the toolchain


That being said gentoo isn't for everyone ;) but based upon original question gentoo is the easiest to install the lastest nvidia drivers
 
I do it the manual way with the driver download from nvidia.com. I'm running in Red Hat Enterprise.
 
I use debian linux and I just download the installer right from nvidia's website. Installation, including building the modules takes about a minute tops.
 
I did use the nvidia installer from their site... since it did not find a pre-compiled version from ftp of my distro, thats why it had to automatically recompile. Worked like a champ once gcc was installed. Might have been a few steps more than Windows (like exiting x first, using CLI) but definately do-able with the right (intuitive) error messages.
 
If you're still using Fedora Core 8, try this one.

Step 1:

Code: 
rpm -Uvh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-8.rpm

Step 2:

Code: 
yum -y install kmod-nvidia

If NVIDIA logo at boot, then success.

Source: Click Here
 
lagos said:
If your on Ubuntu you can install an app called Envy. It will automatically download and install all the latest drivers for any Nvidia or ATI card. Everything is done with a few clicks of the mouse, no command lines needed.
http://albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html
Click to expand...


above link said:
WARNING: you will have to remove the driver you installed with Envy before upgrading Debian or Ubuntu to a newer release (e.g. upgrading Ubuntu Edgy to Ubuntu Feisty or Debian Etch to Debian Lenny).
Click to expand...

Does Envy need to be uninstalled every time you upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu or Debian? :confused:
 
On ubuntu 7.10, in your application manager (I switched to synaptic, I think the default is called avant), just search for restricted drivers. When you click on it, you will see NVidia as one listed. select install, and reboot.
 
bmartin said:
On ubuntu 7.10, in your application manager (I switched to synaptic, I think the default is called avant), just search for restricted drivers. When you click on it, you will see NVidia as one listed. select install, and reboot.
Click to expand...

he asked for latest. THat laggs behind a fair bit
 
My fault. I just did an update on mine, and got newer drivers. I never checked to see if they were the most up to date. (Still getting over 50,000FPS on my GLX Gears lol)
 
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