Well obviously I can do it manually, I was just wondering why aren't these drivers available through "Additional Drivers", and why are the versions available there outdated.
4 Answers
Drivers in the Additional Tool
will never be updated to higher versions unless there is a very big issue with them. You need to either add the PPA or update manually.
Upon a Ubuntu release packages are frozen in time only to be updated in case of major problems and bugs. Adding this PPA will update your drivers to the latest versions using packages packed by the Ubuntu team.
The System 76 folks maintain a PPA with just the nvidia drivers in them, so you can use this for just about any machine with an nvidia driver. The nice thing is they keep this PPA up to date with the latest upstream nvidia driver, making this PPA ideal for gamers.
If you already have the drivers installed in your system via the Additional Drivers
tool
Add the System76 driver PPA (that includes Nvidia drivers)
sudo add-apt-repository -ys ppa:system76-dev/stable
Update and upgrade
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install system76-driver-nvidia
Then either restart the X server or reboot.
How to remove/uninstall these drivers
Install ppa-purge
sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
Purge the system76 team PPA
sudo ppa-purge ppa:system76-dev/stable
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As of today, ppa:system76-dev/stable provides the nvidia 361.42, while the current version is 384. Thus this answer is not the solution any more, because this ppa seems outdated.– Max NAug 9, 2017 at 14:06
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Since it's an old (2015) question the previous answers are a bit outdated. The system76-dev/stable
ppa does not seem up to date. Proprietary NVIDIA drivers are removed from bleeding edge xorg-edgers
PPA but can be found now in the graphics-drivers
PPA.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
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Important to add, that after add the PPA, that one needs also manually add the driver. Then all will show up in additional drivers.– SinaDec 31, 2018 at 11:40
The xorg-edgers PPA also works well. From what I understand, this is a PPA that posts the latest proprietary Nvidia drivers. To install, open a terminal and type:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
Now you should have drivers listed in the Additional Drivers tool.
The only thing I don't get is, when you go to Additional Drivers, why are the proprietary drivers listed as open source?
To Uninstall
Install ppa-purge:
sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
Purge the Edgers' PPA:
sudo ppa-purge ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
Try looking for a PPA. Basically anything in the repos is tested and generally all works the latest versions take time to come through. Some NVIDIA drivers are also classed as experimental so wouldn't be suitable for a novice end user who might stumble across them in additional drivers to install. So a good way of getting the latest and greatest is by seeing if someone has made a PPA by googling. If not you're back to manual sorry!
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well yes, sounds fair enough. What if I use the ones available from the "Additional Drivers"? Will the performance be notably worse? Feb 15, 2012 at 20:18
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not generally unless new features have been added check the NVIDIA website for that info. In some cases especially if they've been tested by the Ubuntu developers performance may actually be improved over untested ones– AndyFeb 15, 2012 at 20:20
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And 1 last thing, there are 2 drivers available. The first is "NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (version current) [recommended]" and the second is "NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (post-release updates) (version current-updates)". Which one should I use? Feb 15, 2012 at 20:21
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I don't think it really matters if you're going for stability i'd go for the recommended one. Check out the descriptions of each they will tell you the difference, if they don't then install either I wouldn't think it matters too much as they're both from the Ubuntu repos– AndyFeb 15, 2012 at 20:28
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I'll follow the other answer, though thanks for clarification :) Feb 15, 2012 at 20:36