UbuntuSolutions

Compiz is a must have on a Linux desktop. It brings the end user experience up to the MacOSX level. Unfortunately it sometimes comes with nasty side effects. On my Inspiron 6400 with a 7300 video card, it started misbehaving in Intrepid with driver 177. Window titles would either disappear or get painted with weird pink stripes. It happens only sometimes and only with a few applications. It may happen when the focus switches from one window to another or just when typing.

Thunderbird is the application where it happens the most. The definitive test is to start a new email and type the subject: the titlebar of that window will systematically get corrupted. It’s really ugly when it happens.

Nvidia driver version 177 is clearly the worst. Reverting to 173 improves things a bit but it still won’t pass the Thunderbird compose email test. You can easily switch to 173 by going to System/Administration/Hardware Drivers.

But today, as I was experimenting with the newest nvidia driver, 180.29, everything got fixed. Big thanks to Nvidia for fixing this!

How to setup the 180 driver in Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex?

I followed the instructions in Adam Michael Roach webpage. Basically, do the following: Append those 2 lines to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/anders-kaseorg/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/anders-kaseorg/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main

and run the following commands:

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 026491A5DD081BDC6CDFC0DE6298AD34413576CB
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx-180

Reboot and you’re done:

me@myhost ~ $ dmesg | grep -i nv
[   16.183016] nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel.
[   16.438964] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
[   16.438974] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
[   16.439174] NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86 Kernel Module  180.29  Wed Feb  4 23:44:25 PST 2009