Instructions

If you are on an LTS, make sure you are running the HWE kernel:

sudo apt update
source /etc/os-release
sudo apt install -y linux-generic-hwe-$VERSION_ID

And reboot.

Then:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y ubuntu-drivers-common
sudo ubuntu-drivers install

That’s it. Don’t install NVIDIA’s Debian repositories, no need to re-compile everytime a new kernel is released and it works with secure boot.

Wait but isn’t that some opensource drivers that are less performant?

No. These will get you the closed-source, proprietary drivers.

But aren’t those old?

No. They might not be the latest ones if the latest ones just got released but they regularly get updated.

But what is the difference with the NVIDIA drivers from NVIDIA then?

  1. They are pre-compiled for your Ubuntu Kernel. The drivers you get from NVIDIA are DKMS packages, which mean they will be re-compiled everytime your kernel is updated. Which can take a lot of time.
  2. Drivers shipped by Canonical are signed by Canonical, so secure boot works.

So I don’t need to install the NVIDIA repo at all?

You might have to in some cases (for example to install the NVIDIA container toolkit).