59

What's the difference between the nvidia-current, and nvidia-current-updates packages?

The former has a higher version number, and the description of the packages are the same.

  • Which do I use?
  • Which is the most recent one
  • What's the purpose of this split packaging?
1
  • 2
    Asking myself the same thing. I know the ones that end in -dev are for development but what is the different between nvidia-current and nvidia-current-updates?. Does it update more often? Oct 17, 2011 at 3:52

1 Answer 1

39

I'm not sure why the versions are different but the change seems quite small nvidia-current changelog.

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.

So in short nvidia-current for a more stable drive that has received more testing and nvidia-current-updates for newer versions of the nvidia proprietary driver that will have received less testing. edit: The nvidia-current package base driver version will also never change

The Additional drivers application provides slightly more detailed descriptions of the packages.

Additional Drivers Screenshot

3
  • What's difference between version 173, version current? Thank you
    – sam
    Dec 17, 2012 at 9:28
  • I think "version 173" i.e. package nvidia-173 is explicitly that base version, whereas "version current" is the base version that your distro (e.g. Trusty) started on and never changes (see edit in answer above). For Trusty, nvidia-current has base version 304: version 304.117 from trusty repo, 304.128 from trusty-updates. You can install nvidia-340 to explicitly install the driver with base version 340 (i.e. 340.93 from trusty-updates) or nvidia-346 to install base version 346; which is an upgrade on nvidia-current.
    – pd12
    Oct 28, 2015 at 23:26
  • Is there a list anywhere of which packages are downloaded for which versions? Specifically looking for information on LTS releases. Apr 26, 2016 at 11:34

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .