There is no way to rotate a display using nvidia proprietary drivers

Is this a duplicate of http://launchpad.net/bugs/148428 ?

Probably. I wasn't sure so I submitted this bug.

And probably it has to be updated, i don't think it affects linux-restricted-modules package.

I don't completely understand what is the error here.

Rotate works if you specify

Option "RandRRotation" "on"

in xorg.conf (at least for me). Error #148428 which is marked as duplicate to this has better description (assuming the problem is the same). I would propose to make that error primary and mark this as a duplicate to that.

(http://ubuntuportal.blogspot.com/2007/02/how-to-setup-pivot-screen-rotation-with.html)

Nee700, this bug was submitted during the round of testing for the nvidia and ati propiertary drivers on lucid. The test case said to expect a failure of xrandr when attempting to rotate the screen and to use the nvidia GUI configuration tool instead. However, the GUI config tool has no option to rotate. Hence my confusion on whether or not this bug was a duplicate to begin with.

If you think it is more clear to switch the duplicate status than please do so. Thanks.

I just tested this again in natty.

I can confirm that adding the "RandRRotation" option to the xorg.conf file manually makes the setting appear in the nvidia config tool. However, when you try to rotate the monitor it crashes and this is displayed on the terminal:

The program 'nvidia-settings' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)'.
  (Details: serial 314 error_code 2 request_code 154 minor_code 2)
  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

NVIDIA finally introduced support for RandR 1.2 and 1.3 in their 302.07 beta Linux graphics driver - see http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA5NTY

The latest 302.xx series driver is the 302.11 Linux driver beta. It contains further RandR improvements and can be installed on Ubuntu 12.04 "Precise Pangolin" by adding and enabling the xorg-edgers PPA which is available at https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa?field.series_filter=precise
Note that in this particular case you can (and probably should) ignore the warning "This PPA is currently meant to be used as a whole. Please do _not_ individually install packages from it, add it to your sources and let your package manager pull in every update." Just install nvidia-graphics-drivers and nvidia-settings.

I've got:
Segmentation fault at address (nil)
Caught signal 11 (Segmentation fault). Server aborting
in Xorg log after upgrading with ~xorg-edgers ppa
had to ppa-purge it to get X session back...