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Following the instructions here, I am attempting to install some specific NVIDIA drivers on Ubuntu 18.04. I am doing this as the first thing after a fresh installation of Ubuntu, such that there are no NVIDIA drivers already installed.

The instructions say to run:

sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends nvidia-driver-418

After doing this, I run apt list --installed | grep nvidia to see what NVIDIA packages it has installed. It prints out 17 package names, including nvidia-driver-418 and nvidia-driver-430.

Then, I run nvidia-smi, and this print out Driver Version: 430.26.

I have also looked at Ubuntu Software -> Additional Drivers, and the checked radio button is for Using NVIDIA metapackage from nvidia-driver-430 (proprietary, tested). Below this is an unchecked radio button for Using NVIDIA driver metapackage from nvidia-driver-410 (open source).

This doesn't seem very consistent to me... My questions are:

  1. Why does installing nvidia-driver-418 actually install both nvidia-driver-418 and nvidia-driver-430?

  2. Given that 430.26 is the driver being used by my system (presumably from the nvidia-driver-430 package), how can I tell my system to actually use the 418 version of the driver? It seems that I could use Ubuntu Software -> Additional Drivers, but this lists version 410, not version 418. And I haven't even installed version 410... What's going on?

Pablo Bianchi
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Karnivaurus
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  • There is no 418 driver in Ubuntu 18.04 repos. The 418 meta package was left for compatibility. What is so good with the 418? – Pilot6 Sep 05 '19 at 18:54
  • I'm not saying there is anything so good about it, I'm just trying to understand how this all works... I don't understand why installing one package actually installs another package. – Karnivaurus Sep 05 '19 at 18:57
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    Simply because nvidia-driver-418 is actually a link to 430. – Pilot6 Sep 05 '19 at 18:59

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