Take the 2-minute tour ×

I just installed the experimental (version 310) proprietary NVIDIA driver for NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550Ti card.

For some reason, the GUI did not come up, so I did it entirely through the terminal, using the jockey-text utility as described here.

How can I put the driver into use? jockey-text --list outputs the following:

kmod:nvidia_experimental_310 - nvidia_experimental_310 (Proprietary, Enabled, Not in use)

I assume the 'enabled' part means the kernel module is enabled; how can I use it?

share|improve this question
did you either restart X (log out and back in) or reboot ? What happens when you run gksu nvidia-settings? –  bodhi.zazen Feb 22 '13 at 18:46
Yes, I did. Rebooted several times. The X Server Configurator by NVIDIA comes up. I've used this before, and I saw it in the applications menu. –  Superuser Feb 22 '13 at 19:29
add comment

1 Answer

up vote 0 down vote accepted

Even if jockey-text reports Not in use it doesn't mean that the driver is not in use.

To really determine if the nvidia driver is in use, run the following commands.

lsmod | grep nvidia

I you see nvidia then the nvidia driver is loaded. If not, you need load it.

Then run


It's a graphical utility that will not only let you know which version of the driver that you're running but also let you configure multi-monitor setup among other things.

enter image description here

From the command line, you can also run the following command to get the driver details.

modinfo nvidia_experimental_310
share|improve this answer
You got it! The driver is indeed in use, thank you very much for your help. –  Superuser Feb 23 '13 at 19:44
add comment

Your Answer


