Steam on Linux: Need to update them Nvidia Driver

Valve is now running a closed beta for its Steam platform on Linux; more specifically Ubuntu. This is a good thing since I do believe what's holding Ubuntu (and Linux in general) back from the mainstream is the lack of good games. I bet down the line, I will be building a Ubuntu gaming rig. This isn't really a bad idea but them video driver repositories need to catch up.

Right now if you let Ubuntu select your Nvidia driver from the official repositories, it will install the 295.xx driver which makes Steam on Linux unhappy. So we need to update it to, at least, 304.xx driver. The least painful way to do this is via ppa rather than downloading the driver from the Nvidia site, shutdown X and sh run the installer.

So to install the Nvidia 304.xx driver on Ubuntu 12.04; Open a terminal and run the following commands:

# Add ppa repo
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
# Update software list
sudo apt-get update
# Install drive
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current nvidia-settings

You should be downloading about 70ish MB worth of stuff. Restart and then configure it via:

# Configure video settings
sudo nvidia-settings

So that's it and you should be downloading the 25 available games and then playing. I'm download Team Fortress 2 and getting my sandvich.