XServer doesn't start after upgrade to 17.10

[Lukas Knuth]

After upgrading from 17.04 to 17.10 (using the UI "Software Updater"), the computer booted normally but the XServer could not start. During boot, the screen would go black for a few seconds, return back to the systemd output (tty1) for a few seconds and then go black again. This continued indefinitely.

FIX: I rebooted the system into runlevel 3 and went to log in via tty1. I tried to manually running "startx", which had the same result as described above. In the "/var/log/Xserver.0.log" I found an error reading "Could not load nvidia module" (paraphrasing).

I checked the ubuntuusers wiki (https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Grafikkarten/Nvidia/nvidia/) and saw that the current driver-version for my card (Nvidia GTX 1070) is "nvidia-384". My installed version was "nvidia-376". I uninstalled the old version and installed the newest version, rebooted the system and all was well.

After the reboot and successful login in in Gnome Shell, I got the standard Ubuntu error-report dialog, saying "nvidia-376 could not be compiled" (paraphrasing).

PROPOSAL: The upgrade-agent should have checked for a newer version of the package and informed me, that the old package-version might not compile against the new kernel/headers.

I understand that the nvidia driver is proprietary software and all, but this has happened in every upgrade I have made so far.