First of all – install Ubuntu [1]. This should be actually straight forward. After running the installation I suggest to do a software update. Just drop the more or less “standard” lines:

sudo apt-get updatesudo apt-get upgrade

To be able to mine, I suggest to check the video card drivers. In my case for the Nvida GTX 780 I use the nvidia-384 proprietary drivers. The following guide might be useful [2] for the installation – either via graphical user interface or via command line.

Now let us install the ethminer. Fast and easy with the following commands as pointed out at [3]:

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ethereum/ethereum
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ethereum ethminer

And for the first test I run it on an Expanse Pool [4]:

ethminer -F http://exp.ethertrench.com:8890/0xe715c09762d8ad5edafa73c0bc5cc700d0a8e5a9/ardbeg -G

Starting it the first time, it takes some time to load the DAG, but once it’s loaded the miner performs better as expected showing a Hash Rate of approximately 17 MH/s – on the miner and on the pool.

For an autostart of the ethminer process, I will drop another blog entry within the next days/weeks.

[1] Ubuntu, Download Page

[2] Ubuntu Help, Nvidia Binary Driver Howto

[3] meebey.net, Ethereum GPU mining on Linux

[4] ethertrench.com, Expanse Mining Pool