The driver used in this guide was tested to work on nvidia 7000M and nvidia 9300 but may also work fine with other nvidia graphic cards. Ubuntu Jaunty Linux, by default, used generic vga driver when it cannot find appropriate driver for your graphics card.

Download the latest nvidia vga driver for your graphics card from the link below.

http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/185.18.14/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-185.18.14-pkg2.run

When download is finished, logout from the desktop and login to the console terminal without the desktop instance running.

Start the installation:

sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-185.18.14-pkg2.run

Now, run nvidia’s xconfigurator utility:

nvidia-xconfig

Save the new X server’s new configuration and run your desktop manager, gdm in my case as i am using gnome.

That’s about it, you should have the nvidia vga driver installed.