There is no way to revert to nouveau drivers via CLI after installing proprietary drivers

[Mikael Strom]

Description: Ubuntu 12.10
Release: 12.10

ubuntu-drivers-common:
  Installed: 1:0.2.71
  Candidate: 1:0.2.71
  Version table:

How to reproduce:

1) Go to "Software Sources->Additional Drivers" and install a proprietary vide driver (i.e. NVidia)
2) In my case, the NVidia driver fails to load, so i'm stuck on the CLI.
3) Try to revert to nouveau driver via ubuntu-drivers is not possible, as there is no such feature.

What I expected to happen:

1) The ubuntu-drivers should list nouveau drivers along with the NVidia drivers
2) There should be an option to install one of the available drivers, i.e nouveau in my case.

What happen instead:

I got stuck at CLI. I managed to uninstall nvidia-xxx and got back the nouveau drivers (sudo apt-get purge nvidia-xxx). However, I suspect that uninstalling nvidia-xxx is not enough as the boot screen is garbled and sometimes hangs at boot.

This was possible in Jockey but is no longer possible after ubuntu-drivers-common replaced Jockey.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
Package: ubuntu-drivers-common 1:0.2.71
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-17.28-generic 3.5.5
Uname: Linux 3.5.0-17-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.6.1-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Oct 24 15:05:40 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" - Release amd64+mac (20121017.3)
SourcePackage: ubuntu-drivers-common
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

There could be an "uninstall" command for a driver, but it would do nothing else than "apt-get purge"; the effort for either is the same, so this would not buy much. But I keep it as a wishlist item.