How to install CUDA for NVIDIA GTX 1050 (Notebook)

Installing NVIDIA graphics drivers on Linux has never been easy for me! I bought a notebook with NVIDIA GTX 1050 GPU recently and installed Kubuntu 16.04. I had to wait for more than a month for NVIDIA to release drivers that supported the notebook 1050 variant.

• Once the driver was released, I downloaded the .run file directly from NVIDIA’s website here. I ran the installation:

$ sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-381.22.run

When I rebooted, I got a black screen! Not surprising with NVIDIA and Linux! I had to uninstall it to get back to work:

$ sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-381.22.run --uninstall

• After another month, I found that the latest NVIDIA driver supporting the notebook 1050 was available from Ubuntu. So, I tried installing that:

$ sudo apt install nvidia-381

Reboot and I got a new error message in a GUI dialog box:

The system is running in low-graphics mode
Your screen, graphics card, and input device settings could not be detected correctly.
You will need to configure these yourself.

I had to uninstall it to get back to work:

$ sudo apt purge nvidia-381

• It finally dawned on me that what I really wanted was to be able to run CUDA programs on the GPU. I did not really care about X or games being able to use the GPU. So, I went back to the .run driver and installed it without OpenGL:

$ sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-381.22.run --no-opengl-files

After rebooting, I found that I still had a desktop. That was a big relief! I proceeded to download and install CUDA:

$ sudo sh cuda_8.0.61_375.26_linux.run

I took care to not install the graphics driver that comes along with the CUDA installer. That is it! I was able to compile and run the CUDA samples. Running ./deviceQuery from the samples showed the GTX 1050 and that is all I wanted! :)