PPA installed driver 396.24 is causing CUDA 9.2 installation error

Accelerated Computing CUDA CUDA Setup and Installation
1

During installation of CUDA 9.2 on my Ubuntu 18.04 desktop machine it reports an error on finding the already installed driver 396.24 I got from PPA. It is trying to install driver 396.26. How can I get rid of the 396.24? I have tried several times using various syntaxes of remove or purge, but I’m obviously not expert enough to get it right.

This is the text of the error message:

Unpacking nvidia-396 (396.26-0ubuntu1) ...
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cuda-repo-9-2-local/./nvidia-396_396.26-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb (--unpack):
 trying to overwrite '/lib/udev/rules.d/71-nvidia.rules', which is also in package nvidia-kernel-common-396 396.24-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.1
dpkg-deb: error: paste subprocess was killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cuda-repo-9-2-local/./nvidia-396_396.26-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
2

i had the same error on pop!os 18.04
one Alexadre Goddard just posted this on askubuntu, i’m about to try it:
(I believe this assumes you have installed 396.24 from the ppa)

Fix the broken package

sudo dpkg -i --force-overwrite /var/cuda-repo-9-2-local/./nvidia-396_396.26-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb

Reinstall the whole thing while passing the --force-overwrite option to the underlying Dpkg when running the install command (based on *****[this answer])

sudo apt-get -o Dpkg::Options::="--force-overwrite" install cuda

*****[this answer] refers to:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/56761/force-apt-get-to-overwrite-file-installed-by-another-package