How to Install Nvidia Driver 331.67 in Ubuntu 14.04/12.04

Last updated: April 13, 2014

Nvidia ubuntu 14.04

Nvidia driver 331.67 for Linux has been released which brings new GPUs support and a few bug fixes. This tutorial will show you how to install this proprietary driver in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty and Ubuntu 12.04 Precise.

Nvidia 331.67 release highlights:

  • Added support for the following GPUs:
    • GeForce GT 705
    • GeForce GT 720
    • GeForce GTX 860M
    • GeForce GTX 870M
    • GeForce GTX 880M
    • GeForce GTX TITAN Black
  • Fixed a bug that could lead to crashes when running Left 4 Dead 2 with threaded optimizations enabled.
  • Updated the makefile for the NVIDIA kernel module to work around a bug in older versions of GNU Make that prevented the NVIDIA kernel module from building correctly. This bug was fixed in version 3.81 of GNU Make.
  • Fixed a bug that causes some X clients to be disconnected from the X server when the screen is resized while RandR 1.4 display offloading is in use.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause display corruption when resuming from suspend on systems using RandR 1.4 display offloading with recent Linux kernels.
  • Added support for Tridelity SL stereo mode.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause nvidia-settings to crash or display incorrect information after switching virtual terminals while a color correction confirmation countdown was active.

Install Nvidia 331.67:

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run the commands below to remove the previous driver:

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*; sudo apt-get install nvidia-331-updates-dev

2. Restart your computer. Go to Software & Updates -> Additional drivers and switch to recommended open-source driver.

3. Download Nvidia 331.67 for:

32 bit Linux

64 bit Linux

32 bit ARM

4. Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 (or F2 ~ F6) key combination on your keyboard to switch to command console and login. Stop the graphic session by running the appropriate command below:

sudo service lightdm stop ## For the default LightDM

sudo service gdm stop ## For the Gnome GDM

sudo service mdm stop ## For the Linux Mint default MDM

5. Now give executable permission and start the installer, and finally follow the on-screen instructions to complete the process.

chmod +x ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*-331.67.run && sudo sh ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*-331.67.run

Tips: You may keep the installer file so that you can remove this driver via below command if for some reason this driver does not work properly:

sudo sh ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*-331.67.run --uninstall

That’s it. Enjoy!

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19 responses to How to Install Nvidia Driver 331.67 in Ubuntu 14.04/12.04

  1. YES, it works, many thanky. But “sudo apt-get install nvidia-331-updates-dev” doesn´t works. Packages not found. No matter. Why I had to install a recommended open-source driver?

    • Do this to solve the packages not found.
      sudo apt-get clean
      sudo apt-get autoclean
      sudo apt-get autoremove
      sudo apt-get install -f

  2. Very helpful! This fixed my problem related to nvidia drivers not working with 14.04. I would suggest using this method to anyone with an nvidia gpu that is not working properly after the upgrade. Thanks!

  3. Thank you very much, solved my problem. The trick is the updates-dev package + nvidia installer.

  4. I can’t access Ubuntu after “sudo apt-get install nvidia-331-updates-dev”. The system on reboot freezes before login…

  5. Everytime i update any distro i have to go through this :/ that being one of the few downsides to linux

    • For Nvidia, you can use the open source driver available in Ubuntu universe repository, just run:

      sudo apt-get install nvidia-current
  6. Thankyou so much for your help, my Ubuntu boot has been crashed ever since last update, havent been able to use it in a month.

    Very happy to of found your excellent solution.

  7. Please help me with my gt 220

  8. Iqbal Tawakal June 22, 2014 at 2:09 am

    did I need to do 5 steps if it could work in step1?

  9. Thank You Ji m. Very nice indeed.

  10. Hi, thanks for this tutorial. I just want to ask, what is the difference between installing nvidia drivers using this method or using command sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

  11. The problem is latest official drivers from Nvidia (the ones I got to work are 3.31.62 not 67 but its all very close) have a bug in the dependencies section of the debian spec. Well, actually there are several bugs since there is also conflict with wine, and missing of Multiarch in the spec too. But other then the spec they are actually fine and work quite well. What is documented above breaks standard APT process of installing packages by overriding some of them from tarball/nvidia run. This has potential for other issues for those who do it and will make maintenance and updating harder.

    If you are willing to create a custom debian package and local repository here is another way to solve the issue(s) and get new Nvidia drivers to work with Ubuntu 14.04:
    https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/738594/cuda-6-installation-on-ubuntu-14-04/

    If you don’t actually need CUDA 6.0 you can get everything to work fine by using nvidia-331 package from Ubuntu 14.04 which includes 3.31.38 driver from Nvidia.
    Just do “apt-get install nvidia-331” or you can do it from the GUI too (System Settings->Driver Manager in Kubuntu). It still has a conflict with Wine but you can get around i by removing nvidia-libopencl1-331 before installation of Wine.

    I’ve read this thread as well as half a dozen others and there was no good solution without having to create custom package to replace nvidia-331. Hopefully this will get this solved when Nvidia officially releases support for Ubuntu 14.04.

  12. Thanks! after updating hardware support on 12.04 LTS nvidia driver was not working well (freezing), your solution worked like a charm!

  13. i’m using 12.04 with a (GeForce 860M), and although i get no errors on installataion by the above procedure, the nvidia driver gives me an “activated but not currently in use” message in Additional Drivers. Any ideas?

    Thanks!

  14. I have a nvidia GTX870M and Ubuntu 14.04 was giving me some kernel error message about driver “nouveau”.
    lspci -k :
    10:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK104M [GeForce GTX 870M] (rev a1)
    Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 1106
    Kernel driver in use: nouveau

    Kernel errors:
    nouveau E[ PBUS][0000:01:00.0] MMIO write of 0x00000000 FAULT at 0x418880 [ IBUS ]
    ….
    nouveau E[ PIBUS][0000:01:00.0] GPC1: 0x419eb4 0xbadf1000 (0x3800820c)
    ….
    nouveau E[ PGRAPH][0000:01:00.0] HUB_INIT timed out

    Step 1 and 2 fixed all these error messages.
    But the I continued to other steps and it has completely trashed my video: no more graphics.
    I even had strange bug while rebooting. my bios setup had changed! I had to reset it to boot normally.
    The uninstall did not work … I think I will reinstall from scratch, and stop at step 2.

  15. I only get a black screen after this. Ubuntu does not boot up? Help?

    • I also got the black screen Matt. It’s not that ubuntu isn’t booting up, it’s that for some reason the Xconfig file gets fragged after a second reboot of teh system. Meaning the GUI goes down, with consecutive reboots.

      To get it back up, reboot, go to recovery mode @ grub.
      Failsafe graphics mode.

      Then generic.

      This should reset your graphics to it’s default state, so you can at least get back into ubuntu.

      I’m just gonna work through the next steps in this solution and see if it resolves the issue.