Latest NVIDIA driver on Ubuntu 16.04

Question

I'm on Ubuntu 16.04 and I notice that in the "Additional Drivers" tab of "Software & Updates", the latest versions of NVIDIA drivers I can install are

1. version 367.57 from nvidia-367 (proprietary)
2. version 370.28 from nvidia-370 (open source)

Aside from the fact that I don't know what "proprietary" and "open source" mean here, I also don't see an option to select the driver version based on my actual graphics card. I'm using GTX 1080 and the current Long Lived Branch version is 375.20; will the Ubuntu graphics PPA be updated eventually, or will I have to manually install 375?

Answer 1

I cant find any reference to support in jockey for nVidia 375 yet. But the manual installation isn't as difficult as you might think.

Official Instructions

1. Download the driver version 375.20 from here
2. $ chmod 777 NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-375.20.run
3. $ sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-375.20.run
4. $ sudo apt-get update
5. $ sudo apt-get upgrade

Install via PPA

1. $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
2. $ sudo apt update

Potential Issues

• Black screen on startup - Add nomodeset to grub - see this answer
• Removing nVidia Drivers - Purge - see this answer

Addendum to the Login Loop issue, via @michael__treat :

Make sure that secure boot is disabled in Windows Boot Manager. The walk-through from Ubuntu may be incomplete. During testing, I found that I had to use the Windows System Boot Manager, and manually disable secure boot.

This solved the login loop issue in my case.

TL;DR: Make sure secure boot is actually turned off.

• When you reach grub, go to windows boot manager
• Press e
• change secureboot from enabled to disabled

Answer 2

Proprietary : Owned/Provided by some company (In your case these are the 
              Graphics drivers provided by Nvidia)

Open Source: Developed/Provided by an open source community.

If you want to use CUDA (nVidia's stuff for executing functions on the GPU), you should use the proprietary driver.

If you want to use OpenCL (something like CUDA, developed by Khronos), you have to use the open source driver.

To install latest drivers add PPA :

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt update 

Now, find Software & Updates under System Settings and select the required driver version form the Additional Drivers tab, select the driver and click Apply Changes. Restart and Enjoy!

PS: Sometimes the best driver version doesn't seem to work well, so you must check whether you're enjoying all the functionalities provided and whether it contain bugs and please do check whether nvidia-prime is installed because it comes handy in most of the situations where bugs lead to a black screen.

Answer 3

I was successful updating Asus NVIDIA 1080 8 GB GPU drivers for Ubuntu 16.04 with the CUDA Toolkit:

$ wget http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/ubuntu1604/x86_64/cuda-repo-ubuntu1604_8.0.61-1_amd64.deb
$ wget http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/machine-learning/repos/ubuntu1604/x86_64/libcudnn6_6.0.21-1%2Bcuda8.0_amd64.deb
$ wget http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/machine-learning/repos/ubuntu1604/x86_64/libcudnn6-dev_6.0.21-1%2Bcuda8.0_amd64.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i cuda-repo-ubuntu1604_8.0.61-1_amd64.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i libcudnn6_6.0.21-1+cuda8.0_amd64.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i libcudnn6-dev_6.0.21-1+cuda8.0_amd64.deb
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install cuda=8.0.61-1
$ sudo apt-get install libcudnn6-dev

Reboot then proceed with the following:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install nvidia-367
$ sudo apt-get install mesa-common-dev
$ sudo apt-get install freeglut3-dev

I lifted the aforementioned from Changjiang's blog, which primes your build for Deep Learning if you're so inclined.. :D

Answer 4

Recently I found it more convenient to use the proprietary drivers. The next question is, which version? There is a systematic approach to installing the most appropriate driver, which may or not may be the latest version. I wrote the annotated installation guide in this article. The steps in brief are as follows.

1. Go to NVIDIA driver download page.

2. Provide the OS information, graphics card model, and CUDA toolkit version and perform Search.

3. In the search result page, the recommended driver version will be displayed. Keep it as a reference.

4. After adding the private NVIDIA ppa repository, update the apt index.

   $ sudo apt-get update

5. Search the available drivers from the apt cache

   $ sudo apt-cache search nvidia | grep -E "nvidia-[0-9]{3}"

6. From the list, install the version recommended by NVIDIA (may not be the latest). For version 390, the install command will be as simple as:

   $ sudo apt-get install nvidia-390

7. Reboot the system and check the driver version with nvidia-smi command

Answer 5

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa $ sudo apt update

This is the best solution.Do this and update the nvidia driver and it works with 4.13 kernels Nvidia 340.104 works with kernel 4.13 without problems. I tested it on Peppermint 8 respin