Ubuntu – Ubuntu 16.04 “Nvidia GPU Driver” can not use proprietary driver

driversgraphicsnvidiapackage-management

After a fresh install (16.04) to my notebook which have Nvidia GT 750m, I want to change GPU driver from "Software & Updates" –> "Additional Drivers". System identifies my graphic card, no problem but when I select a proprietary driver and apply changes. After a few seconds, change bar stops and nouveau selected by default again.

I tried from terminal;

sudo apt-get install nvidia-361

but output says "you have held broken packages"

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-361 : Depends: lib32gcc1 but it is not going to be installed
              Depends: libc6-i386 but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Then issue is not about nvidia-361, all drivers are same.

Best Answer

In ubuntu 16.04, if Software & Updates -> Additional Drivers, is started from menu or Unity launcher, choosing a proprietary driver doesn't work. Upon selecting a new driver and clicking apply changes, progress bar moves forward for sometime, then goes back and the previous driver is selected again.

It looks like the issue is that Software & Updates is initialized without super user privileges. The solution is, open a terminal and type:

$ sudo software-properties-gtk

And type password if required. Then select the proprietary driver and click apply changes.

This method solved me the problem.

PS : Edited after seeing the comments.

Related Question