Close, but no cigar

After many wipe and reinstall attempts with 16.04, I went back to Google to read. As it turns out, using an older version of Ubuntu, 14.04 LTS to be exact, works a lot better. For reasons unknown to me, many of the missing packages were already there by default, which cut down quite a bit on the install time.

So, word to the wise, stay with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS if you want Char-RNN to work well, or simply to save yourself a lot of apt-get install backtracking. Trust me, the install of Karpthy goes much more smoothly.

Which brings me to my next hiccup during the install.
Graphic Drivers.

Karpathy works fine CPU-bound, but works faster, much faster, running through a GPU.
Which means having a video card, and drivers, and more importantly, either CUDA (for nVidia cards) or OpenCL (for AMD/ATI cards) installed.

Given nVidia rules the roost when it comes to GFX cards and gaming, I had a few spare ones I wasn't using, that I could easily drop in to the spare PC and install CUDA.

Piece of cake, right?

Wrong. Read on to find out why... 


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