Canonical: "We bundled Nvidia proprietary drivers with Ubuntu right on the ISO! :D"
Both my 1050 Ti and 1030: -rejects any driver but Nouveau-
I'm not even blasting Canonical for this (in fact I think it's great). My system is just cursed lol
So update on this. Apparently proprietary Nvidia drivers only choke on vanilla Ubuntu (i.e. GNOME 3). Xubuntu, Lubuntu and Ubuntu MATE all cooperate.
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Kubuntu also behaves badly, but less frequent than gnome
@nikolal Funny enough, I was tempted to try Kubuntu and see what would happen, but I got too comfortable with how my Lubuntu setup turned out and that was probably for the best.