Ubuntu – Cant install Nvidia-396 from ppa in Ubuntu 18.04

driversnvidia

I have enabled the Nvidia graphics driver ppa and I have the 390 drivers installed.

I am trying to upgrade to the 396 drivers but I am running into difficulties.

The normal way I've installed the nvidia graphics drivers is by installing the package named 'nvidia-390'. The first thing I noticed is that there isn't a package called 'nvidia-396'. However there is a package called 'nvidia-driver-396'. When I try and install that however I get the following error message.

jamie@jamie-ncase:~$ sudo apt install nvidia-driver-396
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-396 : Depends: nvidia-dkms-396 (= 396.54-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: libnvidia-decode-396 (= 396.54-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: libnvidia-encode-396 (= 396.54-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: nvidia-utils-396 (= 396.54-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: xserver-xorg-video-nvidia-396 (= 396.54-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: libnvidia-cfg1-396 (= 396.54-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: libnvidia-fbc1-396 (= 396.54-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                     Recommends: libnvidia-decode-396:i386 (= 396.54-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.1)
                     Recommends: libnvidia-encode-396:i386 (= 396.54-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.1)
                     Recommends: libnvidia-ifr1-396:i386 (= 396.54-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.1)
                     Recommends: libnvidia-fbc1-396:i386 (= 396.54-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.1)
                     Recommends: libnvidia-gl-396:i386 (= 396.54-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.1)
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

The thing is i'm pretty sure I don't have broken packages unless I try and install this new driver: I can run 'sudo apt update' and 'sudo apt dist-upgrade' no problem, both run fine.

Best Answer

Had the same thing happening yesterday. What I did to fix it was switching back to Nouveau first, reboot, then install the latest NV driver, reboot. I also tried all kinds of other stuff with apt and dpkg like you, but that's what ultimately fixed it.

You can use the "additional drivers" program for everything.

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