Getting Nvidia GeForce GT 635M to work in 13.04

Question

I am writing a plugin for AutoCAD in C#. I would like to change the position of the pivot point of a group. It is possible to do that by mouse clicking but after deselecting and reselecting the group, it automatically moves back to it's default position (which looks like it is the center point of the bounding box).

If I use something like...

private void SetBasePoint(Group group)
{
    group.AnyAvailableMethod();
    //or...
    group.AnyAvailableAttribute;
}

...none of the offered attributes or methods give me any solution or hint how to get there.

Does anyone have a clue how to access the pivot?

-Mike

Solution

I have no experience with these drivers and I don't own such hardware but I will try to give some preliminary information and hopefully it helps a bit.

1. There is no special way that would provide higher reliability for something that was installed from .run file. If you want stability then always prefer installing software from Ubuntu repositories – not getting bleeding edge also means less bleeding. I have one tip though. With some run files there is an option to create deb-file from the installer. If you install that deb-file it is much easier to remove/replace it later. I have done it previously with ATI drivers but based on this answer it seems to be much more difficult with Nvidia drivers. There is a good guide about installing run files here.

2. Depends on so many things that it is best to try what works best on your system.

3. Proprietary drivers are called after nvidia and open source drivers are called nouveau. The rest that you have named are special extras for special hardware. Namely for Nvidia Optimus technology that you have in your laptop. Basically it means you have two graphics adapters – one lighter that is used on regular tasks and other much more powerful that is used when needed. For handling all that complexity extra software is needed and this is exactly what Bumbelbee is for. In theory one could use Bumbelbee both either with proprietary driver or nouveau driver. For Bumbelbee setup on Ubuntu see this. As I read from here you could check /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf file to see which driver Bumblebee is using. Primus and optirun/VirtualGL are pieces of software that help in 3D rendering (process of generating an graphical images) and Bumbelbee uses them to get its job done. Apparently as they claim Primus is newer and better alternative to VirtualGL. To read more about Primus and how to install it see this.

4. With proprietary driver you get GUI rather similar to Nvidia settings in Windows. With open source drivers you can use GUI settings managers that come with Ubuntu. In my experience both options work fine.

5. As I understand it from your comments then there is either a bug in your system or in Ubuntu in general or you either have too new hardware (its a sweet machine). The point is that if there are proprietary drivers allowed in your system but Ubuntu doesn't offer driver under Additional drivers then either hardware doesn't get detected or the driver in the repository doesn't support your hardware or something is broken. So it might also be a bug that you should report. In any case, looking at the current situation my advice would be to try set up nouveau with Bumbelbee and preferably start with fresh install as after “trying several things” tends to mess up things. All you need should be in the ppa:bumblebee/stable and Ubuntu repositories. Make sure you follow the Bumblebee guide in Ubuntu wiki. It is always good to try some already tried options again in a clean system when you know better what you are doing and what is what.

Other tips:

• Use synaptic as advised by meteorainer as it is especially good tool for such troubleshooting situations. It is as surgical as you can get in package management without being command line guru.
• When you try one driver see before that other driver is removed (in synaptic select to remove completely particular package or on command line use apt-get --purge remove package-name-goes-here). Having open source driver and proprietary driver installed at the same time is very likely to cause problems.
• Keep track of what driver is being loaded. Especially when things are broken. The most important part of solving complex problems is having the data and in this case it means making good notes. There are various options for doing this. For an example you could use:

~$ sudo lshw -c video

or:

~$ lspci -nnk | grep -iA3 vga

If you still get stuck don't hesitate to expand your original question with new information.

Also if you find this answer useful click upper arrow in the upper left corner.

PS! If there is any incorrect information here let me know and I will edit my text.

Comments

[charlie]

Yes Tuxest! For me that proprietary drivers page is all greyed (disabled). There are no device driver options listed. Is there a way to get my nVidia drivers shown here?

[meteorainer]

I've had great luck just installing the drivers through synaptic. Have you tried that yet? When installing from there, yes there is a GUI for config.

[charlie]

@meteorainer - your response should have been an answer, not a comment. Anyways, is synaptic installation any different from sudo apt-get ? If yes, then I can try that out, but would need more details. Also, what kind of GUI are you talking about here?

[Tanel Mae]

Confirm that you have "Proprietary drivers for devices (restricted)" checked under System settings-> Software & updates. If it is checked and driver does not come up under Additional Drivers then for some reason your GPU doesn't get properly detected. If that is the case please give more details on your laptop model and Ubuntu install (is it 32 or 64 bit?).

[Tanel Mae]

What driver was installed after the fresh install? During the installation did you allow setup to allow third party software (includes proprietary drivers)? Describe what do you mean by saying that something broke the system or broke X? Please also add output of "sudo lshw -c video" command to your question.

[charlie]

@Tuxest : yes 'Proprietary drivers for devices (restricted)' is checked in the System Settings. - I got an ASUS K55VJ with nVIDIA GeForce 635M with 64-bit ubuntu (first I tried with 12.10, and now with 13.04) For nVidia, I have tried practically everything I could get out there (not at the same time off course); yes thrid party software installation was allowed during install. What I meant was that unless I use bumblebee, everytime I end up breaking X, and once even broke Unity

[Pankhuri]

Just for clearence, I have also optimus graphics on my laptop, and it doesn't list anything in "proprietary driver list" whatever I do.. Seems like its a common issue.. But for me Bumblebee works, for now! :P

[charlie]

Thanks a lot for the details. This does seem promising and will try it when I get back from work. But wanted to get the community's opinion on this method (sorry I really dont wanna mess up my installation again) and also, are these driver versions listed the same as what are available from download on the official nVidia linux support website?

[meteorainer]

No apology necessary. When I did the first driver update from 304 to 310 lightdm didn't want to restart so I had to completely strip out the drivers from terminal then reboot and reinstall from synaptic. There is something about doing it manually that causes a version mismatch between kernel and driver, but 30mins of fiddling got it back up without any serious pain.

[charlie]

Sign! All look swell on the forums. I tried 2 things - installing the 310 drivers available in synaptic, and installing the drivers I had downloaded from Nvidia site....both broke my unity and reduced the screen width to half

[meteorainer]

Try sudo apt-get remove nvidia* This will remove anything nvidia related. You will be back to stock drivers. Then retry 310 or 313. I assume you have already checked for compatibility with your video card as well.

[charlie]

Yes I checked the compatibility and tried with various driver versions. Still no benefit!..but thanks anyways

[charlie]

I installed v310 drivers, first via synaptic, and when that did not work, cleaned up and ran the installation script of the driver I had downloaded from the official nvidia website...both gave same results by breaking X and unity...although when I used ' lsmod | grep nvidia*' I could see the nvidia module loaded, but it was not being used (0 displayed). Any help on getting it to be used?

[meteorainer]

So you are booting into terminal then? That's what happened to me, but stipping out nvidia and putting it back fixed it. If you do startx what happens?

[charlie]

Hey, @meteorainer I am now running nvidia version 319 and it seems to run fine. How do I get the GUI for settings like the screenshot you pasted?