Nvidia Drivers - Install the latest from Nvidia, or downgrade

[TheBigAmbulance]

I have the package nvidia-current installed for my 12.04 system.

dpich@dpich-M6400:~$ sudo dpkg -l | grep nvidia
[sudo] password for dpich: 
ii  libkwinnvidiahack4                        4:4.8.4a-0ubuntu0.1                     library used by nvidia cards for the KDE window manager
ii  nvidia-common                             1:0.2.44                                Find obsolete NVIDIA drivers
ii  nvidia-current                            295.40-0ubuntu1                         NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module and VDPAU library
ii  nvidia-settings                           295.40-0ubuntu1~oneiric~xup1            Tool of configuring the NVIDIA graphics driver
dpich@dpich-M6400:~$

I'm running into some weirdness on this driver, and reading on a bunch of other forums it seems others do to.

So I have two choices, downgrade or upgrade. The latest drivers available from Nvidia are 295.59, which would mean a manual install. I am not familiar with trying to figure out the downgraded version.

What would be a recommended path to disable the nvidia-current, and then install the latest 295.59? I'm thinking I would just purge the 'nvidia-*' packages and then from console stopping kdm, installing, and then starting up kdm again. Would it be better to downgrade? What's the best approach to that?

[ronw]

You could also try:

Package: nvidia-current-updates
State: installed
Automatically installed: no
Version: 295.49-0ubuntu0.1
Priority: optional
Section: restricted/misc

It's not as current as 295.59, but solved the problems I had with 295.40. For now anyway.

[sixonetonoffun]

I think 295.40 was a rushed release to fix a security bug from 295.39 which incidentally ran real well for me.
295.49 and 295.53 both ran well for me.

[vw72]

Using nvidia-current will not update the version that was released with 12.04. It has problems. Changing your nvidia driver to current-updates as ronw suggests will allow it to update to the latest stable version that is in the repository. It usually won't be the latest nvidia driver produced by nvidia, but the latest one that has been packaged for Ubuntu.

[TheBigAmbulance]

Well, THAT was an adventure! What I tried to do is remove basically everything "nvidia-*" using 'apt-get purge'. Then I manually installed the driver downloaded from Nvidia. OUCH! Didn't work!! So after much fussing and fighting, I manually removed the Nvidia driver I downloaded, purged everything nvidia, then restarted. While in a nonkdm terminal (ctrl-alt-f1), installed nvidia-current, nvidia-settings, and nvidia-current-updates. Once I did that and restored by backup xorg.conf file, all is well. I am now running 259.49.

I need a break.....! Thanks Fellas!!