Ubuntu – difference between “sudo apt-get install cuda” and “sudo apt-get install nvidia-cuda-toolkit”

cudadriversnvidia

Using sudo apt-get install cuda updates my NVIDIA drivers and my screen stops working. (GeForce GTX 660M; Ubuntu 14.04; CUDA 6.5). I was wondering if usingsudo apt-get install nvidia-cuda-toolkit would help? What is the difference between the two ? I was hoping that the later only installs the toolkit and doesn't change my drivers.
I am sorry if this question seems trivial. I am new to Ubuntu. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks in advance 🙂

Best Answer

The "difference" is that there does not exist any package with the name cuda, so you can not install it - the package nvidia-cuda-toolkit though does exist (see the explanation below) : 

apt policy cuda
N: Unable to locate package cuda  

apt policy nvidia-cuda-toolkit  
nvidia-cuda-toolkit:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 8.0.44-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
     8.0.44-0ubuntu1 500
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu yakkety/multiverse amd64 Packages

The Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) enables NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs) to be used for massively parallel general purpose computation. nvidia-cuda-toolkit contains the nvcc compiler and other tools needed for building CUDA applications. Learn more about the details on the official NVIDIA Accelerated Computing Portal -> NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit

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