Ubuntu 13.04 is here and is being hailed as the best Ubuntu yet.
Being an advocate I wish I could agree, however this release is the first one in years that hasn’t “just worked” for me.
If that isn’t disappointing enough, the reason it doesn’t work are, in my opinion downright unforgiveable – The Nvidia driver has been replaced with the open-source equivalent effort, namely Nouveau. I think I spelled that right. If not Google will conveniently correct me anyway when I go searching for ways to fix my new screen resolution of 640×480 pixels.
Forcing this upon people when the performance comparison are as follows (see below) is just plain stooopid. Especially as you’ve already spent money on the nvidia card in the first place – why get all “open source” about driving it when nvidia provides the drivers for free? Duhhhh. It doesn’t help push the use of Steam either (the PC gaming platform for Linux) when the resultant performance is half what it could be. Whilst I admire the open source communitys desire to do-it-yourself, the rest of the world ain’t that bovvered.
A pet hate of mine is when people make a fantastic effort to post a solution to a problem using the GUI instead of the command line. So if you use the most unpopular Ubuntu desktop of all time (Unity) then you’re in luck, but if you use one of the other desktops, then you’re out of luck.
Hopefully those of you using Ubuntu Studio like you should, will find this and correct your nvidia issues by installing the proprietary drivers using the command prompt.
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa -y; sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade -y; sudo apt-get install nvidia-316 nvidia-settings-316 -y
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Hi. I’m getting an “nvidia-316 nvidia-settings-316 package not found” error after the update and upgrade. using ubuntu 13.04 fresh install. nvidia geforce 9500gt card with resolution problems (unity launcher half off left edge of screen).
Linux:~$ lspci | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G96 [GeForce 9500 GT] (rev a1)
Thank you!
May I refer you to Malvin’s comment incase this helps. It’s tricky to make recommendations when people are running different models of card that I cannot test myself. We can only comment on what has worked for us for each of our respective hardware setups.
Hope your problem gets sorted out. Please feel free to leave more comments if you make it work.
Matt
Since posting my solution, it is highly likely that nvidia-316 nvidia-settings-316 has moved on to a later version and so the package name will have changed.
So, if you’ve been able to add the repository and perform a “sudo apt-get update” successfully, then you can use tab command line completion on the command line to show you all the packages beginning with the name nvidia- after typing sudo apt-get install nvidia- or just use synaptic package manager to find it.
-Matt
Faced a similar problem after installing 13.04 version. Downloaded Nvidia driver ( in my case GEFORCE 6150SE nForce 430. Used the Additional driver tab under Software update, selected the 304 update ( proprietary) driver from the list of display driver and installed it.
Did a system reboot and the issue of resolution resolved.
How it should be. Sounds like the initial issues affecting nvidia/ubuntu 13.04 users have been smoothed over now.
Thanks for your post.
Matt
Mate,
Couldn’t agree more. Moving from 12.10 to 13.04 has been a disaster for me. I’ve tried installing the nvidia drivers but then when I login all I get is a black screen, so I’ve had to roll back to the Nouveau drivers.
I’m having issues with the Nouevau drivers in that after a few hours of use I start getting parts of windows etc been render on the desktop, icons get corrupted and eventually the system becomes unusable until I do a reboot.
For some reason booting into Ubuntu now takes a long time. I’m trying to figure that out.
Also the sign-on to facebook is now broken for me, when I do eventually log on I get numerous firefox windows all trying to authenticate with Facebook.
I’ve become so fed up I’ve been looking at Hackintosh builds and Mint as a possible replacement, heck I’ve even dug out an old Win7 install disk.
Your issues sound “upgrade” related. Have you tried a fresh install, followed by the nvidia fix? I personally fell out of love with the regular ubuntu distro since Unity. I use Ubuntu Studio. It’s like xubuntu with a little more thought gone in. Nvidia issues still need the fix, but i’ve had no other issues since, on multiple machines. I wouldn’t hackintosh. But mint has been a consistently good offering, taking a top spot on distrowatch for years now. Mint is almost too good. It leaves little room for hacking as everything just works!. I’ll pretend i didn’t read windows 7. 😉