Today NVIDIA has released a new (stable) Linux graphics drivers for Linux community. The latest beta nVIDIA 304.51 driver is now available for download and offers support for the new models of GeForce GTX 6xx series, meaning GTX650 and GTX600. Simply put, this is the stable version for 304.48 — the last week’s beta driver. For more information take a look at the changelog below:
- – Fixed RandR per-CRTC gamma persistence across modeswitches and VT-switches.
- – An X.Org Server hang on input.
- – A performance regression fix for some 2D/X11 rendering operations that affected some graphics cards since the Linux 290 series.
- – A correction so PowerMizer works properly on some GDDR5 graphics cards.
- – Support for the GeForce GTX 650 and GeForce GTX 660.
- – A bug fix for OpenGL applications not animating properly when a rotation or transformation was applied.
- – A fix for NVIDIA-Settings to handle “Reset Hardware Defaults”.
- – FXAA anti-aliasing for Unified Back Buffers.
How to Install 304.51
With the thousands of commands available for the command line user, how can you remember them all? The answer is, you don’t. The real power of the computer is its ability to do the work for you. To get it to do that, we use the power of the shell to automate things. First we test, second we write and then we provide.
Our nVIDIA Installer script is a collections of commands that are stored in a file. The shell can read this file and act on the commands as if they were typed at the keyboard. This is the very early beta of this script, and soon enough there will be a GUI version with lot’s of features.
Please notice that our script works only with Ubuntu. No other Linux distributions are supported. In order to install this driver, please use our 1-click installer script and select the “stable” or “beta” update. This is a stable driver, so feel free to play on the safe side of the road. Also, if this is your first nVIDIA proprietary blob install, the script will remove all the drivers… thus you need to run it twice in order to install the driver (the second time) into a clean (no garbage/old remaining files) system.
http://utappia.org/howto/nvidia-drivers-installer-script/
After the reboot, open Dash and type “nvidia“. Using this tool you can configure all these nvidia settings 🙂
btw you can use our script to unistall the drivers (in case you have problems).
Utappia 
Using the uXeye installer script broke my window manager in KDE 4.8 (Mint 13). After installing the driver and rebooting I had no window borders.
Doing a full ‘sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade’ brought down lots of apparently outdated packages but still left me with no window borders.
To fix this, I did ‘sudo apt-get install kde-window-manager’ which fixed this issue.
My only problem now is that OpenGL compositing is SLOW… I have had to switch to XRender to get good performance back again.
Anyone else with this problem?
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Sorry, I should mention my hardware:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GT216 [GeForce GT 330M] (rev a2)
On SONY vaio VPCF11S1E… (Core i7, 6GB RAM, SSD)
The NVidia driver in the Linux Mint 13 repos had good OpenGL compositing performance though XRender seems very fast now but I cannot say for sure what it was like on previous driver as I never tested it.
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Use the script to uninstall the drivers and go back to open source. The, I suppose you have a new gen core i7 with embedded Intel graphics (eg HD3000 or HD4000), if so, you need hybrid graphics, a driver that can switch you between discrete GT330M and Intel IGPU. Linux-wise there is a project called Bumblebee – http://forum.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=97156
In Windows, the same technology is called Optimus — soon there will be Linux support too.
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No I have an original core i7 with no Intel graphics… (Core i7 720QM).
OpenGL works but animations are jittery… For example, opening the main kde menu jitters up in 2-3 steps rather than a smooth sliding effect. Using WebGL was also slower than when using XRender (which was very fast and smooth).
I wasn’t using the open source drivers before but the repo version of the proprietary NVidia drivers.
I might switch back but at the moment XRender is working OK so not a big problem but was wondering if anyone else has had these problems with the latest driver?
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I have just ran the uXeye script on a different (desktop) machine (this time running Kubuntu 12.04) that has a NVidia 520GT card.
I had the same problem where the script blows out the KDE window manager. I had to do a apt-get update/upgrade (to install lots of new packages after installation even though the system was fully up to date before running the script) and then apt-get install kde-window-manager to restore my window borders.
However, OpenGL compositing is running fast on this graphics card so my original problem seems to be the latest NVidia drivers and the 330M gfx chip.
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