Ubuntu – Ubuntu 17.10 on Wayland – (How) can I install the NVIDIA drivers

17.10driversnvidia

I have a NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1060 graphics card – how do I have to install the NVIDIA drivers properly in Ubuntu 17.10?
Is it the same procedure as in 17.04 or does the fact that Ubuntu 17.10 uses the Wayland session by default change something?

Best Answer

The proprietary NVIDIA drivers are still not supported under Wayland, yet. When you want to install and use the NVIDIA drivers, you have to select Ubuntu on Xorg on the GDM login screen to enter the X session. Install the latest stable NVIDIA drivers by executing these commands in a terminal :

  • To install the NVIDIA drivers, execute sudo apt install nvidia-384.

  • Additionally you can force the GDM login screen to use Xorg by default.
    To achieve this, just execute sudo nano /etc/gdm3/custom.conf.
    Remove the character # from the line # WaylandEnable=false.
    Now press Ctrl+X, then Y and Enter to save that change.

  • Restart the Ubuntu operating system, execute sudo reboot.

The installation process did not change since Ubuntu 17.04 - and on X everything is the same. The current situation might change soon, because there is already some promising work in progress to get the proprietary NVIDIA drivers running in a Wayland session - maybe in Ubuntu 18.04 it'll work.

Find more details about the current development status from the developers on GitHub :
The EGL External Platform interface | The EGLStream-based Wayland external platform

Related Question