Installation fails on Linux Mint, kernel 3.8.0-19

ERROR: If you are using a Linux 2.4 kernel, …

            If you are using a Linux 2.6 kernel, ...

How do I install Cuda for a Linux 3.8 kernel?!

What exactly is the problem? What errors do you get? Do you have the right gcc version?

Well, the errors that I truncated above were oddly the result of my not running the install as superuser in location that required it. Once I figured that out, I made progress. After having to rebuild the kernel several times - first, using gcc 4.4, as the gcc 4.7 toolchain is apparently too new for building the NVIDIA driver and/or kernel module, and the kernel must be built with the same version of gcc as the kernel modules. Then, once I was finally able to get the driver to build, it turned out that the kernel module was a different version than the driver - 304.88 vs. 319.23. So I uninstalled everything related to NVIDIA and rebuilt the driver/kernel modules. Now, I was informed that XEN is incompatible with NVIDIA, so I had to rebuild the kernel without XEN support. THEN, it turned out that something called, if I remember correctly, Nouveau, is ALSO incompatible with NVIDIA, so I had to rebuild the kernel again without XEN and Nouveau support. Then, I rebuilt the NVIDIA driver and kernel module for what felt like the 87th time, and everything finally worked.

I have to say, I’ve been using and building free and/or open source software for Linux pretty much since Linux was introduced, and this was by far the most difficult experience I’ve had getting something up and running.

At any rate, I’m good to go. I know I could probably have saved myself at least the XEN and Nouveau issues by reading documentation somewhere, but that might have ended up taking longer :-)