Developers Devising Plan To Ship Newer NVIDIA Drivers On Ubuntu Stable Releases

Currently NVIDIA's packaged drivers on Ubuntu can get a bit stale on Ubuntu stable releases since they aren't updated in-step with the latest driver releases. But a new stable release update (SRU) policy/exception similar to the Firefox approach is being made for Ubuntu so that new releases will end up working their way into currently supported Ubuntu series.

The Canonical developers working on Ubuntu are really ramping up their support for NVIDIA's proprietary driver. On top of Ubuntu 19.10 to bundle the NVIDIA binary driver into the operating system's ISO image, they are working out the SRU details for shipping newer NVIDIA driver releases on existing Ubuntu stable releases.

There is a NVIDIA updates policy being revised on the Ubuntu Wiki outlining the details for NVIDIA's different release streams and the Ubuntu plans for handling these updates on both LTS and non-LTS releases.

But if you are a gamer/enthusiast and always clamoring for the latest and greatest driver, these NVIDIA driver updates won't be quite for you. The updates won't be immediate but could take roughly around two months after a NVIDIA driver release before they will actually be promoted to the main updates area. So for those always wanting the newest drivers, you'll still want to be using third-party PPAs or installing the newest NVIDIA Linux drivers manually. Nevertheless, it's nice to see Ubuntu developers working on improving the process for getting out updated NVIDIA drivers given new hardware support and the never-ending improvements around OpenGL / Vulkan / OpenCL / CUDA and more.