Hi mark, thanks for your report. We plan to improve this interface for Ubuntu 19.10, as part of the inclusion of Nvidia drivers in the official Ubuntu repositories.
I think the issue you are seeing, with a newer driver showing as “tested” while an older one is not, is that the older one is what Nvidia calls the “Long Lived” driver and the newer one the “Short Lived”, which people choose depending on whether they want stability, compatibility with the latest game updates, etc. So it’s not simply a case of “newer × tested” >> “older × untested”. When I designed the current UI, in January 2012, that distinction had existed for only four months and I wasn’t aware of it. Now, we’ll show Nvidia’s “Long Lived” and “Short Lived” terminology in the GUI. At the same time, as you suggested, we’ll drop technical wording that doesn’t help you make a choice, like “metapackage” and “X.org X server”. Here’s the new design: <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareAndUpdatesSettings#drivers> ** Changed in: software-properties (Ubuntu) Status: Invalid => Triaged -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1839756 Title: Nvidia driver options are not easy to understand To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/software-properties/+bug/1839756/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
