Comment 6 for bug 261816

Since updating to intrepid I NEVER succeded installing the nvidia drivers for my Geforce 6 Series through the jockey tool. Activating one of the four proposed drivers (173, 177, 71, 96) always seems to install it - but never to activate it!! Restarting the gdm or the system always led to the anoying X reconfiguring screen. And even there, selecting the nvidia driver - installed only seconds before with jockey - disables gdm from starting up correctly. Hmmmm, so the nvidia driver has not been installed and activated, even though the jockey tool told me so before??? Very anoying! Another strange thing is that newer versions of the x-server don't seem to need a xorg.conf file anymore - but the nvidia does for its option, card, and monitor settings!? Very strange!! Mabe there lies the big trouble of the x-server and nvdia playing smoothly together ...

Luckily, downloading and installing the nvidia driver manually always succeded!! Hopefully, the jockey version in the final intrepid release will work a 100 percent. Here are my steps to install the nvidia driver, which of course you have to repeat every time you install a new kernel:

1. Download, save an make executable NVIDIA-Linux-x86-177.67-pkg1.run.
2. Go to console with CTRL+ALT+F1, login, and kill gdm with "sudo killall gdm".
3. Uninstall the old nvidia driver with "sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-177.67-pkg1.run --uninstall".
4. IMPORTANT: Delete ALL xorg.config files with "sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg*".
5. Install the nvidia driver with "sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-177.67-pkg1.run".
(6. Remove everything of nvidia and jockey in synaptic - exept maybe nvidia-settings.)

Hope this helps a little! André