nVidia Drivers with Compositing on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

Ok.  I will admit it.  I love compositing (Compiz) in Linux.  I absolutely adore it.  Clearly, this can be a bit of a problem as compositing on NVidia cards (more specifically using the Linux proprietary drivers) in Linux can be a bit of a challenge (understatement) at times. Post-Lucid-upgrade has proven to be one of these times.  After having a smooth dist-upgrade and eventually a full, fresh install on my Eee 1000HE, I decided to forge forward with installing Lucid (x86 - reasons for we can debate elsewhere)from scratch on my custom built desktop recently.  As was the case with my netbook, Lucid installed largely without a hitch (See previous Grub post). Once up and running, I of course wanted to get nVidia up and running.  For some reason on my SLI enabled (dual 8500GTs) desktop, I have never been able to get the repo nVidia drivers to work without issue.  Unfortunately after some trial and error, I was unable to get the nVidia supplied drivers up and running - after reading through some Lucid docs, I found out that the newest nVidia driver is currently incompatible with some of the system changes made with Lucid. Fortunately, this time, the ‘nvidia-current’ from the repos did work for me!  Here is what I did to get it up and running in case you encounter the same ‘black screen errors that I did when installing from within Gnome.  I can’t say why it didn’t work in the GUI for me, but it didnt… First, I had to get into a working shell by booting into “recovery mode” from grub - its a menu option below your normal boot item.  Once prompted, I selected netroot, which provides network access from the shell.  To get things installed properly, I had to get to init level 3: $ initlevel 3 Then log in using your normal user login. Get needed files: $ sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r’ Blacklist nouveau by adding ‘blacklist nouveau’ to your blacklist.conf: $ sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf Install latest stabled nVidia repo drivers: $ sudo apt-get install nvidia-current Finally, generate the nVidia xorg.conf: $ sudo nvidia-xconfig After completing the above, I was able to reboot (”$ sudo reboot now”) into my nVidia backed Gnome desktop and finish completing my nVidia setup (ALT+F2, “gksu nvidia-settings”).  Then finally, I was able to get my Compiz back up and running - which came with its own problems and will be covered in another post! Hope this helps! -Matt