I run Ubuntu 14.04 and even with 12.04 I've had to do the following to get drivers updated.

1) Reboot PC and enter "recovery" mode
2) Remove all NVidia drivers ( Used to use sudo apt-get purge nvidia-current, but sometimes you need to remove the specific driver aka nvidia-311 or whatever you have at that time )
3) Re-install NVidia drivers ( Check what the latest driver should be from the official repo and install that version sudo apt-get install nvidia-358 )

However, I've noticed that after my last driver update I did this way I no longer need to use command line as my Ubuntu is set to weekly update and I saw on Monday that the drivers now install along with other updates.
The Additional Drivers thing never worked 100% for me. I always had to first reboot to recovery mode, remove all nvidia drivers, then reboot (MESA drivers should then kick in) and then when in Ubuntu use Additional Drivers. However I used the above method with better success.
Hope that helps.

Quoting: coryrj19951I just received my GTX 970 today. I removed the AMD drivers and then installed my new card, but am having problems installing the drivers. Normally I would download the AMD drivers, set them as executable and then go the tty1 and install them, but I can't change the tty with the 970 in, just a black screen.

Anyone have any advice on how to install the drivers? I have 358.16 downloaded, but can't install with X running.

why are you trying to install from the website? its the windows way of doing things.
now depending what distro you have (according to your profile, its linux mint).
find additional drivers(or something like that) and install via that
or if your distro doesnt have enough up to date ones then grab a PPA for newer drivers

[quote=Xpander]

Quoting: coryrj19951why are you trying to install from the website? its the windows way of doing things.
now depending what distro you have (according to your profile, its linux mint).
find additional drivers(or something like that) and install via that
or if your distro doesnt have enough up to date ones then grab a PPA for newer drivers

Does it make any difference? I'm asking because I've always installed them through the website (on multiple distros) and haven't had any issues.

I got the drivers installed, but my system wouldn't even boot to grub after I rebooted. I could boot live disks just fine though, so I tried to re-install Mint but that wouldn't boot either after I got it installed again. I was begining to think my card was defective but then I found a Manjaro disk and booted from that, and it detected the card and had an option to boot with Nvidia drivers, now it is running perfect (after my hard drive was wiped :P ) now I am installing manjaro right now, I think that Mint disk I got from ZaReason isn't working properly.

Quoting: Angelic_MewI run Ubuntu 14.04 and even with 12.04 I've had to do the following to get drivers updated.
1) Reboot PC and enter "recovery" mode
Hope that helps.

Arrhhggg! I forgot about recovery mode. Didn't even think about doing that.

Edit: Manjaro installed and everything working as it should, remind me to never change major GPU brands again :P

Edit 2: Tried Metro Redux 0_0 I've never seen anything look that good run that smooth.

I've always had nothing but success installing the drivers from this PPA:
 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
apt-cache search "NVIDIA binary driver"

And then install whichever driver you wish. It's always worked for me. If you do install the driver from nVidia, make sure you have dkms installed, so you can safely update the kernel without having to reinstall the driver.

That PPA doesn't have the newest drivers immediately, nor, of course, the beta drivers, but they aren't that far behind either, and when a new driver comes out, a simple apt-get upgrade command will do the trick.

Quoting: oldrocker99I've always had nothing but success installing the drivers from this PPA:

Thanks! I'll try that if I can get Mint installed again.

Quoting: Avehicle7887Does it make any difference? I'm asking because I've always installed them through the website (on multiple distros) and haven't had any issues.

'

-kernel updates usually break this
-you have to keep eye on it to update on time of kernel/xserver updates
-on 64bit system 32bit libs were missing after website driver install (happened on mint and arch, havent tried other distros)
-have to turn off xserver to install drivers


those have been the issues.. using drivers from repo is always painfree

Quoting: oldrocker99I've always had nothing but success installing the drivers from this PPA:
 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
apt-cache search "NVIDIA binary driver"

And then install whichever driver you wish. It's always worked for me. If you do install the driver from nVidia, make sure you have dkms installed, so you can safely update the kernel without having to reinstall the driver.

That PPA doesn't have the newest drivers immediately, nor, of course, the beta drivers, but they aren't that far behind either, and when a new driver comes out, a simple apt-get upgrade command will do the trick.

No, no no. Don't use that PPA.

Use the official PPA https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

In Manjaro, the latest NVIDIA drivers are packaged.

Ok, I got mint installed with the proprietary drivers, through the PPA. I still have one question though, do the open source drivers support the EVGA GTX 970?

On every system I tried to boot I had problems, Cinnamon would automatically go to software rendering ( in a live environment ), and other distros wouldn't even load a desktop. Manjaro on the other hand would, as it had the option to boot with Nvidia's drivers.

It took me two hours this morning to jump back and forth between my Mint install and my Mint live disk to get some .deb packages copied to my main system's apt cache as I couldn't get a connection with my wireless card (another problem, couldn't figure out how to use ndiswrapper without a GUI :P ) Finally got a software rendered desktop in Mint on my hard drive and was able to get proprietary drivers installed.

I got it though, and now time to play Shadow of Mordor on ultra high :D