After problems on multiple machines I finally got nvidia binary drivers to work. I kept getting an error that the kernel module did not match the driver version and vice versa. Finally figured it out by searching on the net here’s my findings.

This procedure might work on other versions of Ubuntu but I don’t have those to test.

The instructions that nvidia gives with it’s binary are as generic as can be. This is a major problem for anyone who has installed the restricted drivers that are shipped with Ubuntu. If yer like me I always want the latest video drivers and you may run into some problems with that.

all the commands we will use will require root access we’ll have to use sudo. To make it easier we’ll issue sudo -s so we don’t have to use sudo in front of every command.

We first have to make sure we have the development packages with the linux headers and xorg dev installed.

Make sure we do not have any old drivers installed.

There are some files that might be left behind that will need removing
rm /etc/init.d/nvidia-glx
rm /etc/init.d/nvidia-kernel

Additionally, delete the following file if it exists:

now just install the new drivers

Follow the instructions and everything should be good.