Installing NVIDIA CUDA on Ubuntu desktops is about to get a whole lot easier, as Canonical today announced plans to package and distribute the latest releases in the Ubuntu repositories.
Currently, to install CUDA Toolkit and runtime on Ubuntu, users go to the NVIDIA website and download a repo DEB, install it, import a GPG key, pin the APT repo, and then install the relevant packages they need from the repo.
Shortly, everything they need will be in once place: the Ubuntu repos.
In packaging the CUDA toolkit and runtime (which includes proprietary components) and distributing it the Ubuntu archives, the ensure process is is simplified: a single command can installed everything, and users with supported NVIDIA hardware can get on with using it.
The move is part of an ongoing partnership between Canonical and NVIDIA, aimed at providing ‘turnkey AI solutions for the enterprise’ on Ubuntu — something NVIDIA CUDA is a core component of.
Once CUDA redistribution is fully integrated into Ubuntu, application developers and system administrators can expect the current multi-step CUDA installation process to become a single command
Canonical
CUDA is described as “a parallel computing platform and programming model that lets developers use NVIDIA GPUs for general-purpose processing”.
In practice, it is used for all kinds of things, from faster video encoding and machine learning training, to robotics, scientific computing and other computationally intensive workloads.
Which is why CUDA is widely used by developers, researchers, animators, data scientists, and AI/ML engineers. Making it easier to install on Ubuntu through a single command1, users and enterprises will find Ubuntu a more attractive platform.
With CUDA available in the Ubuntu repos, any app or software that targets Ubuntu and makes use of CUDA is better able to detect and integrate with the software.
That helps position Ubuntu as a practical option to anyone looking for a capable, reliable and ready-to-use development environment (and with LTS support, security and stability reassurances).
Ubuntu may not be cool® among chronically-online and self-styled Linux influencers, but the distro remains the world’s most popular desktop Linux operating system. The bulk of the tens of millions of people who use it, use it for what it lets them do.
And with CUDA in the repos (presumably the multiverse section), that’s more than before.
You can find a pinch more detail on the Canonical blog.
- What command? Canonical hasn’t said. It may be that CUDA is packaged as a Snap, but as the announcement talks about the Ubuntu repositories, a DEB is most likely. ↩︎