All right this is for people who are asking me how to install graphic card drivers on Ubuntu. Basically, you have your system up and running. It should pop-up something like this and it will tell you, you want to install the drivers now. If it does not pop up, you can always go to your menus and go to system administration and go look for a hardware driver, right? You should have something like this.
Now, it depends what kind of card you have, Nvidia or ATI and they give you a few options, right like the recommended one. The newer ones are not always the better one, so if the new one does not work out good for you, use the older ones.
That is pretty much all you got to do, just click on the one that you want and hit activate and half of that it will download it and you will have to restart your computer and that is pretty much it.
Now, if you have nothing in here, like it’s all blank. It does not give you ATI or Nvidia or anything like that, the next easiest way to do this is with the Add and Remove. Now in Add or Remove, make sure it says, “All available applications” and look for whatever drivers you want like ATI drivers and this will be it, ATI Binary Drivers. Check on that and hit Apply Changes and it will install it for you.
Same thing if you have Nvidia, make a search for Nvidia and there you go, you have Nvidia options here. See they have different versions, 173, 71, 77 here. So just check the one that you want.
Now for some reason, they do no have the 180 in here. I do no know the reason but they do not have 180. So, another way to do this is the Sonaptic. So there are a lot of ways so you can install it on here. But in the Sonaptic, they have more stuff in here and like I said, 180 drivers. That’s mainly what you want installed if you want the 180. That is it and if you have ATI, just search for FGLRX and pretty much this is the ATI installed, the xorg drivers here and I believe this one also and this one and that is how you get the Nvidia.
Now, if you wanted to do it manually, like you know in Windows, you have to go head over Google, download the newest package or the newest EXE or whatever and then you install it manually. You can do that too.
Now if you do not know what card you have, I recommend using this program here, hardinfo. Basically, it’s kind of like Everest on Windows. This is what it looks like and it will tell you what card you have if you do no know it.
Also, see if you do not know what card you have. It will tell you here about your hardware that you have. So I have a GeForce 7600GT which is Nvidia. So with that in mind, we are going to go look in Google or whatever, just Google ATI or Linux Drivers or Nvidia Linux Drivers and they will take to the site. So let’s say, we found the site right. So ATI basically look for what you are using. I am using 64-bit so that is what I am going to do.
Most people use the 32-bits which is this low. I am using 64, pick the card that you have, I have a Radeon, I have a 3800 Series or this 3 Series here, click GO. Basically here it is, ATI Catalyst Display Driver and hit Download. So they will give you like a Run file, send in if you want to do with Nvidia, search for Nvidia drivers. So I have a GeForce 7 Series and a 64-bit or whatever it is you are using and I hit Search and that is it.
And in here is pretty much kind of like ATI. I mean yeah ATI, they give you a run file after you download it, right. So you download this run file and they will tell you how to install it like here is this sh in the file name and that is how you would do it but read upon it if you want to install it manually. I do not recommend doing it manually but if you have to, you have to.
So here we go, there is the file, right? You can do this manually with the terminal. So buzz out your terminal. Now this is how you do it on Ubuntu’s so you have to type in sudo because you have to admit and then sh because that is what they tell us to do, right? So sudo sh and then the easiest way is just to drag the file in here and to put in the path for you and then you hit Enter and it will tell you to type in password. Now this won’t work because, I guess I have the wrong X Server Version or something like that but this is usually how they do it. So that is up to you if you want to try it.
For Linux in general, Nvidia is better than ATI as far as drivers. ATI cards are good but the Linux driver version that is why I do not recommend ATI fro Linux. Nvidia is the way to go if you need to buy a card, go at Nvidia, if you kind of use the Linux like full time. So that is that.
Now I think someone else is asking me about the dual display or something like that. After you install your driver, you should have like some you know Nvidia settings or ATI settings here right in your display setting. Just go on there, look for something like screens or something. I do not have a Dual Monitor to try but I would think it is in here somewhere. So I would say, play around with these and it will tell you the layout of your screen and it depends if you have more than one or something.
I see I only have one so I can not do anything but I will say, look in here first if you want to do a dual monitor and either that. After that, hit up Google or something and someone should show to do this or if someone wondered, reply to this video and you have a dual monitor setup, go ahead.
So that is pretty much it, it’s not that hard. This for Ubuntu I know in other distributions they have it separate okay. So the driver is not even in your repositories like I think Fedora. They have like an RPM fusions. It’s kind of like the mini Ubuntus which I just do not get. Why waste my time? Just give it to me you know. I’ll tell you that’s not the way they do it. So just be aware of it. You might have to search for repositories or do it manually if you are done, your repositories are ready. So that’s it.
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