Why is fglrx's package version higher than fglrx-updates?

Question

I'm having problems with the DRI infrastructure and the fglrx drivers. When searching for a solution I have noticed that in Synaptic the fglrx package is at version 9.002 and fglrx-updates is at 8.960, what is the Canonical policy on this?

What is the point of having an updated version much older than the standard version ?

I'm on Ubuntu 12.04 amd64.

Answer 1

This has nothing to do with Canonical, but with availability from other sources. Did you by any chance try to install fglrx from the ati website or from a PPA?

With apt-cache policy <packagename> you can check which version is installed on your system and which version is in the repositories.

Output for fglrx:

fglrx:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 2:8.960-0ubuntu1.1
  Version table:
     2:9.002-0ubuntu1 0
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2:8.960-0ubuntu1.1 0
        500 http://nl.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/restricted amd64 Packages
     2:8.960-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://nl.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/restricted amd64 Packages

Output for fglrx-updates

fglrx-updates:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 2:8.960-0ubuntu1.1
  Version table:
     2:8.960-0ubuntu1.1 0
        500 http://nl.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/restricted amd64 Packages
     2:8.960-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://nl.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/restricted amd64 Packages

As you can see in the ubuntu repositories both are version 8.960, the 9.002 is only in my list because I installed it in the past from the ati website.

EDIT: You can check which version you have installed by

 dpkg -l | grep fglrx | grep ii

or if you installed without using the package manager

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep fglrx | grep -A4 'Kernel Module Version Information'