Install NVIDIA proprietary drivers in Ubuntu 13.10 or Linux mint 15/16

My super awesome NVIDIA Quadro K600 doesn't work properly with the default video drivers in Linux mint 15, 16 or Ubuntu 13.10. Especially in mint it was especially unstable. In Ubuntu everything seems fine for a few days, until the GPU finally crashed as well.

Linux mint 15 / 16

You disable the default driver called nouveau, to be loaded by the kernel with nouveau.blacklist=1.

In mint I've tried editing GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX etc. in /usr/share/grub/default/grub and all of /etc/grub.d/*. Somehow update-grub didn't parse it, I was not so patient, so I ended up simply editting /boot/grub/grub.cfg.

trigen@Firefly21 ~ $ vim /boot/grub/grub.cfg
...
:g/^\s*linux
        linux   /boot/vmlinuz-3.8.0-19-generic root=UUID=60f8754f-f688-461e-b120-bf8402c1e2a9 ro nouveau.blacklist=1
        linux   /boot/vmlinuz-3.8.0-19-generic root=UUID=60f8754f-f688-461e-b120-bf8402c1e2a9 ro recovery nomodeset nouveau.blacklist=1
        linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin
        linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin console=ttyS0,115200n8
Press ENTER or type command to continue

Reboot the system. CTRL+ALT+F1, login, sudo service mdm stop, ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-331.20.run and follow instructions. Reboot.

Ubuntu 13.10

In ubuntu I attempted to directly edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg again. Adding the blacklist parameter, somehow this failed, the NVIDIA installer still complaining about nouveau being loaded.

So I attempted the 'normal approach' again: vim /etc/default/grub, modified this line: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset nouveau.blacklist=1". I also googled and found this answer on stackoverflow, suggesting the nomodeset is necessary as well. (So I added both). sudo update-grub and EAT REBOOT INSTALL REPEAT.

Reboot the system. CTRL+ALT+F1, login, sudo service lightdm stop, ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-331.20.run and follow instructions. Reboot.

Some notes: Install grub into specific partition

This is a "Note to self", how to install grub for specific partition (source). I needed this command fixing my dual boot (linux and windows on one ssd).

sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sda
sudo update-grub

Somehow linux mint f*cked up my boot to windows 8 partition. It had some problems recognizing my partition table or something. (At work I have the exact same setup, and there were no problems.) I ended up fixing it with the above command, and from windows (had to restore an image) using this tutorial that uses EasyBCD.