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Asked: 2019-01-16 12:20:43 +0800 CST

Do I have to remove my current Nvidia drivers before installing new ones?

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I'm using Ubuntu 18.04 on a hybrid Nvidia laptop, with the Ubuntu-packaged Nvidia 390 drivers. I'd like to upgrade to the version 410 drivers, so I added the graphics-drivers PPA and tried to install them, since everywhere I found online suggested that that's all you need to do. Instead apt shouted about a load of dependency problems that installing the new drivers would cause:

$ sudo apt install nvidia-driver-410 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies.
 nvidia-driver-410 : Depends: libnvidia-gl-410 (= 410.78-0ubuntu1~gpu18.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: nvidia-dkms-410 (= 410.78-0ubuntu1~gpu18.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: nvidia-kernel-source-410 (= 410.78-0ubuntu1~gpu18.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: libnvidia-compute-410 (= 410.78-0ubuntu1~gpu18.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: nvidia-compute-utils-410 (= 410.78-0ubuntu1~gpu18.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: libnvidia-decode-410 (= 410.78-0ubuntu1~gpu18.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: libnvidia-encode-410 (= 410.78-0ubuntu1~gpu18.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: nvidia-utils-410 (= 410.78-0ubuntu1~gpu18.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: libnvidia-ifr1-410 (= 410.78-0ubuntu1~gpu18.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                     Recommends: libnvidia-compute-410:i386 (= 410.78-0ubuntu1~gpu18.04.1)
                     Recommends: libnvidia-decode-410:i386 (= 410.78-0ubuntu1~gpu18.04.1)
                     Recommends: libnvidia-encode-410:i386 (= 410.78-0ubuntu1~gpu18.04.1)
                     Recommends: libnvidia-ifr1-410:i386 (= 410.78-0ubuntu1~gpu18.04.1)
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

The problems look genuine – aptitude why-not says that the 390 drivers conflict (directly or indirectly) with just about every part of the 410 drivers. In that case:

  • Do I need to uninstall the 390 drivers before I install the 410 drivers? (presumably something like apt purge nvidia-driver-390 && apt autoremove --purge?)
  • Is it safe to do so while using the Nvidia GPU? What do I do if I'm unable to install the new drivers?
package-management drivers nvidia graphics hybrid-graphics

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer
    1. Need... No. Advisable... yes. Generally the system will first remove conflicting packages, like the old driver, before installing the new packages.
    2. Yes. The system will fall back to the generic driver.

    What do I do if I'm unable to install the new drivers?

    You install the older version again. Only real problem you could run into is a system that crashes during boot. In that case you can delete a driver from grub rescue.

    If all else fails... re-install. So BEFORE you do anything you make a backup of all your personal files.

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