How can I fix 'Unable to load: nvidia-installer ncurses v6 user interface'?

Solution 1:

On my system (Ubuntu), the "/usr/lib/nvidia/pre-install" file does nothing except for running exit 1. A comment above the exit 1 says "Trigger an error exit status to prevent the installer from overwriting Ubuntu's nvidia packages."

So, the pre-install script is designed to fail. It only serves to require the user to acknowledge before proceeding. So @steeldriver's comment above, "I doubt that message indicates a critical error" -- is correct.

In my view, this is a confusing way to craft an installer. I would hope that Nvidia could change the script to be more intuitive.

Solution 2:

On Ubuntu 16.04 (and 18.04, according to comments), I had previously installed nvidia-driver packages, which may have left this file, preventing the installer form running.

My fix to this problem was to rm /usr/lib/nvidia/pre-install, which let the installer continue.