Inconsistencies between the nvidia installer and the nvidia-driver package.

[Rebecca N. Palmer]

What Nvidia card and which version of nvidia-driver?

> I can't get my OpenGl
> programs to work.
"Can't start OpenGL applications" is also the result of installing 
nvidia-driver on non-Nvidia hardware (before rebooting; no graphics at 
all after rebooting, #767367), so that could mean your Nvidia card isn't 
enabled.

Which GPU was running before the upgrade (OpenGL vendor string/OpenGL 
renderer string in glxinfo)?  Are the Nvidia kernel modules loaded 
(lsmod)?  When you use Nvidia's own installer and OpenGL applications do 
work, are they working on the Nvidia GPU or the Intel GPU?

> maybe I should be using Bumblebee to sort through this,
Try that (as you're using the proprietary driver, you'll need 
bumblebee-nvidia not just bumblebee): does it help?

See also http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/Optimus/ , though some of 
that may be specific to the open-source driver.