[Bug 37056] Re: There should be several nVIDIA driver packages

[Emmet Hikory]

There are several issues with the nVidia installer that are not suitable
for environments other than personal workstations, as follows:

#1)  New nVidia releases have only seen testing in nVidia labs.  These
usually receive significant community testing before being integrated in
Ubuntu, and versions that have significant regressions are not added to
the repositories.

#2)  The nVidia installer requires rerunning commands manually every
time there is an ABI change in the kernel, and depends on a compilation
environment.  linux-restricted-modules takes care of this for the user.
[this is the problem originally raised in this bug]

#3)  The nVidia installer will not automatically update from `aptitude
upgrade`, and so newer versions require regular review of the nVidia
site (or other sources to indicate when new drivers are released).

#4)  The nVidia installer only works for certain hardware, and breaks
other systems, limiting the utility of installing a standard batch of
packages on a collection of slightly different machines.

-- 
There should be several nVIDIA driver packages
https://launchpad.net/bugs/37056