So my overall goal is that I want to be able to code with CUDA enabled applications. However, upon many days of searching, using installation walkthroughs, and reinstalling countless times after driver failure... I'm now here as a last resort.

I cannot get Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to install the NVIDIA 295.59 driver for my GeForce GT 540M NVIDIA graphics card.

My main system specs is as follows... (I believe having the Intel processor may be the problem)

DELL Laptop XPS L502X Intel® Core™ i7-2620M CPU @ 2.70GHz × 4 Intel Integrated Graphics 64 bit NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M Ubuntu 12.04 LTS All other specs are irrelevant unless I forgot something?

Methods Tried: aptitude install nvidia-current (all packages)

Results: Nothing really happened. Nothing in the additional drivers menu appeared, nor was the NVIDIA X Server settings application allowing access because it thought there was no NVIDIA X Server installed.

Downloaded driver from nvidia.com. Set nomodeset in the grub boot menu through /boot/grub/grub.cfg Went to console and turned off lightdm. Installed the driver, but it said the pre-install failed? (mean anything?) Started up lightdm again.

Results: NVIDIA X Server settings still didn't notice it. Even tried to do nvidia-xconfig multiple times. I also went into the config file to make sure the driver setting said "nvidia".

aptitude install nvidia-173 (all packages)

Results: Couldn't find the xorg-video-abi-10 virtual package. It was nowhere to be found and the ubuntu forums everywhere had no answers. Lots of people were having this problem.

This is easily done in windows, simply download the driver and debug in visual studio with no problems at all. I'd like clear step-by-step instructions on how I should go about this. I'm relatively new to linux but I can find my way around pretty well so you aren't talking to a straight-up beginner. Also, if you think another thread may have the answer please post because I was having a hard time looking for my specific type of problem.

TL;DR I want to have access to my GPU so I can code with CUDA while in Ubuntu 12.04 on my 64 bit laptop that also has Intel integrated graphics on the processor.

Solution: sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get install nvidia-current