Comment 3 for bug 653714

As a workaround, I was able to get the nvidia-96 drivers working, but it isn't quite seamless. First, I removed all nvidia packages that were currently installed (with --purge), then selected and installed the nvidia-96 drivers by searching "nvidia" within the "Ubuntu Software Center" and selecting "nvidia-96".

At this point the display would not start with the xorg.conf generated by the "nvidia-xconfig" utility. If you tried to start X with this xorg.conf file, you'd get a complaint that it couldn't find the nvidia driver.

Without an xorg.conf file, X would start, but set to a lower resolution with no ability to switch to 1920x1200.

At some point, I wondered if the nouveau driver was conflicting. I removed the xserver-xorg-video-nouveau package (again with --purge) and then (with no xorg.conf file) the nvidia 96 driver started working correctly with full resolution.

So the working config is:

johnn@johnn-craylap:~$ dpkg --get-selections | grep -i nvidia
nvidia-96 install
nvidia-glx-96 install
nvidia-settings install
johnn@johnn-craylap:~$ dpkg --get-selections | grep -i nouve
libdrm-nouveau1 install
johnn@johnn-craylap:~$ ls -al /etc/X11/xorg.conf
ls: cannot access /etc/X11/xorg.conf: No such file or directory
johnn@johnn-craylap:~$