nvidia-304 package: needed or not?

Hi, I think I found some informations*, but still please for some more details etc. Thank you.

Cheers.
________
* https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-319/+bug/1198942

Hello,

In actual fact no Nvidia driver are needed. None.

Ubuntu comes with nouveau pre-installed. Nouveau is the open source driver for Nvidia and most of the times works good.
If you have a problem with nouveau , or if nouveau does not meet your needs, then you could install a binary Nvidia (closed source) driver.

Ubuntu has several binaries from Nvidia. Nvidia release those drivers, Ubuntu developers test them, and then they pass the binary to Ubuntu Official repository.

Open a terminal (CTRL+ALT+T) and issue the following command

    apt-cache search nvidia | grep binary

You will see how many different versions of Nvidia will be listed.
Several versions, for different graphic cards.

Regards
 NikTh

Hi Nik.Th. Thank you for the answer. Yep, there is so many packages related to NVIDIA - about 14 (from nvidia-96, nvidia-173 to nvidia-304 and nvidia-319!). While I'm using (GeForce 7100);

,-----[ $ lspci |grep VGA ]
| 00:10.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation C73 [GeForce 7100 / nForce 630i] (rev a2)
`-----

So it seems, that the best driver version is nvidia-304, right? After a clean Xbuntu 12.04 beta2 installation, I had not to install any nvidia driver. Everything worked out-of-the-box. All problems (mentioned in my bug) started to happen after last upgrade. I see, that there is a 'nvidia' module loaded (no 'nouveau). I do not remember (but I'm pretty sure was not loaded) if this module was loaded after clean system installation.

'xorg.conf' file is still the same. No changes since system installation. There is only one Section - "Device", which contain Identifier ("Default Device") and Option ("NoLogo" "True"). That's all.

Nik.Th, what should I do? What do You think? Remove all nvidia-96/173/319/[1] packages and leave only 304 version? Reconfigure X11, use 'nouveau' driver? I do not know what to do. A couple of days ago, everything worked like a charm. I do not need, any advanced graphics card functions! It is only a Desktop machine!

Best regards.
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[1] an example: nvidia-319 - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module and VDPAU library
nvidia-319-updates - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module and VDPAU library

Hi. I noticed, that all mentioned packages related to NVIDIA were removed! Yes, removed! It's very strange, because I didn't remove them, because I was waiting for your answer. Now all packages from *nvidia-96* to *nvidia-173* versions are removed and there remained only *nvidia-304*, *nvidia-current* and *nvidia-settings/304*. All of these packages have the same '304.88-0ubuntu0.0.3' versions with the exception of the *nvidia-common* package, which has '1:0.2.44.2' version.

After nvidia related packages upgrade (mentioned above) and after - strange - self-remove an old versions e.g. *nvidia-96* or *nvidia-173* everything seems to run properly and even I have an opportunity to choose another resolution (before it was only 1024x768) etc. Now 'nvidia' module is in use, previously wasn't etc.

There is only one question (mystery): why these old packages were removed? Best regards.

I'd decided to mark this question as Solved.