I had a nice email from Jorge Castro of Canonical today, and it seems they are looking at ways for Ubuntu users to get newer Nvidia graphics drivers in an easier fashion.
Currently, if you want to get newer drivers you need to either download them directly from Nvidia, which can get messy and confusing. Or even more annoying is to find a random PPA with more up to date drivers, neither is a very nice option, and it could be made a lot easier for the end user.
They look to still be going down the route of a PPA, but it's possible that the "additional drivers" manager will have an option for the latest upstream driver, and this would enable an official PPA. I think that's a fantastic solution, to an increasingly annoying problem. Bigger games are coming to Linux, and they are starting to need specific driver versions, so this needs to be looked at.
He also spoke about bringing in some of the latest stuff from SteamOS, so that would benefit gamers too.
You can see the mailing list entry here. It's a post well worth reading, and good to see the Ubuntu guys focus on gaming some more.
I will open up the floor to you lovely knowledgeable people for your thoughts on this.
abelthorne Aug 11, 2015
Quoting: abelthorneIn the drivers tool that's supplied with Ubuntu, they have *-updates versions of the graphic drivers. Isn't it supposed to be a way to have up-to-date drivers or have I been mistaken for years?
That whole thing is currently a mess, and needs better descriptions.
However, for newbies who don't know anything about the terminal, a more intuitive way would be preferable. So this might be a good idea.
kernel.havok Aug 11, 2015
After a fresh install you run the installation and it auto runs a script to blacklist nouveau. You reboot and then run the install again. Now everything installs fine. I usually throw another reboot to be 100% sure.
Voila, latest nvidia drivers
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