How to add proprietary drivers in Ubuntu

[Osiris]

Source: How to add proprietary drivers in Ubuntu

Over the last few years most of my video cards have had NVidia chipsets. And with these chipsets, open source drivers are iffy at times. Because of that I have often employed the use of proprietary drivers. It used to be a challenge to get these to work. Many times you had to recompile a kernel or make sure you had the matching kernel to your video driver. And once you had all of the software installed, you had to manually edit your X configuration file.
Things are very different now. And thanks to Ubuntu there is a very simple route to adding these proprietary drivers to your system.? This article will show you how to manage this task.

 

[Logarithms]

The only negative thing I have to say is an experience my friend went through.

He ran Ubuntu 8.10 and clicked on the hardware driver suggestion icon at the top of the desktop, which then presented him with the list of drivers. He clicked on his wireless card's driver option, and it preceded to "download" the driver and install. However, he was not connected to the internet. He thought he was because the computer detected the missing drivers, and prompted for the install. Even though he wasn't connected to the internet, Ubuntu displayed "Downloading drivers..." So, he assumed when the "install" stopped; it had done it's job. He restarted, and, of course, the laptop was not connected to the internet.

I am not saying everyone is this ignorant, but this guy justed wanted to try Ubuntu (using the Wubi installer). I just wonder if this issue could be fixed so the OS tells people that the computer isn't connected to the internet. If only for the sake of the people attempting to use a different OS.

 

[Jayce]

I'm running 8.10, and if I am disconnected from the internet I have an orange splat, if memory serves me, directly overtop the 2 computer icons side by side which signifies my network manager. Not to take a stab here, but that's 100% how XP is.