I've reinstalled ubuntu after removing it few months ago. Back then, the Nvidia driver worked flawlessly. I don't remember which driver it was for I was trying out Linux for the first time. I remember doing some apt installs and everything just worked. I even remember running some blender renders with the GPU (I used blender 2.79 back then).
But now even if I successfully install the newest Nvidia driver, my applications cannot use them.
Proof of successful installation:
pomp@pomp:~$ sudo apt install nvidia-driver-440
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
nvidia-driver-440 is already the newest version (440.44-0ubuntu0~0.18.04.1).
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
This is what the nvidia-smi
command gives me after installing the driver. Even blender cannot detect any GPU.
pomp@pomp:~$ nvidia-smi
NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn't communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running.
I'm using MX-150 GPU from Nvidia