[nvidia-graphics-drivers] frustration with slow Nvidia drivers release schedule

[AG Restringere]

Something that has really frustrated me about Ubuntu is how nvidia-graphics
drivers packages are never kept in sync with the upstream release schedule.
 As a former Windows user I learned a long time ago that the way to achieve
the best performance from your machine was to keep up to date with official
Nvidia releases. One of the major disadvantages of Ubuntu is that I have to
wait months for new drivers to be released or have to rely on PPA's which
is a non-ideal situation.

Filed a bug about this: #1219908 http://goo.gl/cjtw8N

The official Nvidia long-lived-branch stable driver is now 319.49. That
> means that the recommended official driver is 319.49 and should be used by
> all Nvidia users except those using old legacy devices. There are important
> fixes that are in this driver and the previous 319.17 that affect Chromium
> browser users especially:
> + Fixed a memory leak that occurred when destroying a GLX window but not
> its associated X window.
>


> These can crash machines using Nvidia GPU's according to a Chromium-bug
> http://crbug.com/145600 "NVIDIA linux drivers are unstable when using
> multiple Open GL contexts and with low memory.:" and if check `about:gpu`
> you will see this is a major reason most if not all Nvidia GPU's are
> currently blacklisted.
>


> Also, when using Windows 7 I am liberty to install any driver version I
> want, keeping my machine up to date with the latest official Nvidia fixes.
> With Ubuntu I'm stuck with older drivers that affect performance and
> contain old bugs that have already been fixed. This leads to a lower
> quality experience than with Windows. Drivers need to be kept current with
> upstream in my opinion. For the time being I have been cherry-picking *.deb
> packages from X-Org-Edgers so that I can replicate that Windows experience
> and it's been working. However, all Ubuntu users should have this
> experience as well and most do not know how to manually install packages
> using DPKG so it is out of their reach.
>


> The current Nvidia driver versions are as follows:
> http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html
>


> <http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html>Long Lived Branch version: 319.49
> <-- `nvidia-current` should be here as stable
>


> Short Lived Branch version: 325.15 <-- `nvidia-updates` should be here as
> unstable
>


> Legacy GPU version (304.xx series): 304.108 <-- `nvidia-current-legacy`
> should be here.
>


> This situation has to be solved, Ubuntu cannot be so far behind the curve
> that it cannot keep Nvidia drivers fresh and in sync with the upstream
> Nvidia release schedule...
>


>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers/+bug/1219908


As a Computer Science major and someone who like to learn Linux development
I would like it if one of the Nvidia packagers could come forward and teach
me how to package Nvidia-drivers so we could maintain a semi-official PPA
for the time being that stays in mirror-lock-step with the official
upstream releases.

Best regards,
AGS
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