Follow these steps to install nvidia drivers on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
# get rid of existing nvidia related drivers on your system.
sudo apt-get purge nvidia-*
# add the repository for graphics drivers
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
# update package lists
sudo apt update
# install the necessary drivers
sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall
# Reboot! .. Installation complete.
shutdown -r now
To check that the install was successful, after the reboot try the command
nvidia-smi
Your output will include driver and hardware details like these.
Mon May 18 14:05:00 2020 +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | NVIDIA-SMI 440.82 Driver Version: 440.82 CUDA Version: 10.2 | |-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+ | GPU Name Persistence-M| Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC | | Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap| Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. | |===============================+======================+======================| | 0 GeForce GTX 1080 Off | 00000000:01:00.0 On | N/A | | 0% 43C P5 13W / 200W | 619MiB / 8118MiB | 1% Default | +-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+ +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Processes: GPU Memory | | GPU PID Type Process name Usage | |=============================================================================| | 0 1559 G /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg 30MiB | | 0 1618 G /usr/bin/gnome-shell 49MiB | | 0 1798 G /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg 283MiB | | 0 1958 G /usr/bin/gnome-shell 123MiB | | 0 2460 G ...uest-channel-token=14799922906447784644 7MiB | | 0 3806 G ...AAAAAAAAAAAACAAAAAAAAAA= --shared-files 118MiB | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
That's it folks. Bookmark these essential steps for future problems with nvidia drivers.