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Good news everyone! Canonical will now be offering NVIDIA users up to date graphics drivers without the need to resort to a PPA or anything else.

Since this will be for the Ubuntu LTS releases, this means other Linux distributions based on Ubuntu like Linux Mint, elementary OS, Zorin OS and probably many others will also get these updated NVIDIA drivers too—hooray!

This is really great, as PPAs are not exactly user friendly and sometimes they don't get the testing they truly need when serving so many people. Having the Ubuntu team push out NVIDIA driver updates via an SRU (Stable Release Update), which is the same procedure they use to get you newer Firefox version, is a good way to do it.

Announced on Twitter from the official Ubuntu account, it links to this great video from The Linux Experiment (hi Nick!) to talk about it:

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You can see the official bug report about it here on Canonical's Launchpad, showing it has been accepted.

Since Ubuntu is widely seen as the beginner Linux distribution, no longer having to tell people to "go add this PPA" and getting a confused face back will be very nice indeed. It's especially good for gaming, since often new games (and new Steam Play versions) need a newer driver than what Ubuntu was providing.

Good stuff.

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Shmerl Jul 14, 2019
Quoting: ArehandoroYes, of course, it would have to be Testing or sid.

Testing and Sid usually have up to date Mesa and kernel, so I don't think Debian need to do anything special about it. The only exception are freeze periods (one just has ended), and in such case you better build the kernel and Mesa yourself or install whatever is uploaded to experimental. May be providing Mesa and kernel in experimental more consistently during the freeze could be useful.

What would be an improvement, is if Mesa would make more frequent releases. Current release cycle is way too long.


Last edited by Shmerl on 14 July 2019 at 7:50 am UTC
beko Jul 14, 2019
Quoting: Phlebiac
Quoting: bekoFedora next?

Nope, they will not include proprietary bits by default. It's well supported via RPMFusion though.
I know and I do use RPMFusion - like anyone else. A man can dream tho ;)
Arehandoro Jul 15, 2019
Quoting: Shmerl
Quoting: ArehandoroYes, of course, it would have to be Testing or sid.

Testing and Sid usually have up to date Mesa and kernel, so I don't think Debian need to do anything special about it. The only exception are freeze periods (one just has ended), and in such case you better build the kernel and Mesa yourself or install whatever is uploaded to experimental. May be providing Mesa and kernel in experimental more consistently during the freeze could be useful.

What would be an improvement, is if Mesa would make more frequent releases. Current release cycle is way too long.

Well, not really. Debian sid is still on the kernel 4.19 and on my Arch build in my home desktop I was using 5.0 well before the freeze started. Mesa I think is on 19.0 in sid whilst 19.2 on Arch, probably 19.1 before the freeze.
Shmerl Jul 15, 2019
Quoting: ArehandoroWell, not really. Debian sid is still on the kernel 4.19

And freeze just ended, so that's the result of it.
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