Ubuntu Server 20.04 Nvidia Driver Dependencies

I had a hard time installing Nvidia drivers in a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.04. Installing via sudo apt install nvidia-driver-430 resulted in a list of 542 packages to install. I ended up spending a bit of manual effort to get the Nvidia-provided driver installed without nearly so many dependencies (only had to install gcc and make).

Is this massive number of dependencies normal for Ubuntu Server? I did a very vanilla install without the GUI. Reddit suggested I ask here, as their opinion is that I should just install from the default repos, but I felt that so many packages was absurd just to install a driver.

Edit for clarity: installing the nvidia-driver-430 package appears to install the entire Gnome shell, which I feel is unnecessary on a server.


You can install headless version of an Nvidia driver with the following command:

apt install nvidia-headless-440-server nvidia-utils-440-server