Fixing the Compiz and Nvidia Proprietary Driver Refresh Rate Bug

On Ubuntu 14.04, if you’re on an Nvidia card, the 331 driver in the repos — or anything older — won’t give you trouble. But if you install 340 or above, whether by hand or through a PPA, parts of the system start flickering: buttons, lists, that sort of thing.

Plenty of users have confirmed this is a Compiz bug. There’s a long discussion here, and the eventual fix is to patch it.

No telling when the Compiz patch itself will land, but you can try this PPA:

ppa:townsend/compiz-nvidia-refresh-test

After testing, the problem was gone with the latest 343 driver. Card is a GTX770 4G.

And finally, here’s a PPA with the latest 343 beta driver:

ppa:mamarley/nvidia