Difference between "nvidia" vs "nvidia-updates" drivers?

[Zead]

I've looked on the internet, even asked on Ubuntu forums, no one knows.

I thought "nvidia-updates" will auto-update to new driver, but normal "nvidia" driver did that too, so...

I have installed "nvidia-331" driver, the tested, recommended one. Then like 2 days ago, updater came with update, it wanted to update the driver to UNTESTED version 340.76 for some reason, which is a legacy driver (according to NVIDIA site). So I have purged the driver and installed the new tested one manually (346.87 or something like that)

It has GT520M GPU. And why would the Ubuntu updater wanted to update non-legacy TESTED driver to legacy NON-TESTED driver...?

Makes the whole NVIDIA update process kinda useless. I guess it's better to just completely uninstall the old one, and manually install the new one.

[torreydale]

I feel the same way about the ATI/AMD drivers.

I have a machine that has an NVIDIA card.  I'll stick to the Additional Drivers tab of the Install Drivers app and select the latest TESTED driver when in doubt.

[Zead]

AMD drivers has "updates" versions too?

It's horrible, no one knows what the "updates" versions mean. They could at least say something about this in package manager or Ubuntu wiki.

[tapsisarkar]

The nvidia-current package contains the nvidia driver version that was packaged for 11.10 before the Feature Freeze. Which was driver version 280.13.

nvidia-current-updates is meant to contain the post release/feature freeze nvidia driver releases, which should contain 285 now. Not sure when it will be updated. This is for people who want their driver to be automatically updated as the newer driver versions are packaged.

Tapsi Sarkar