Comment 0 for bug 1047681

[Impact]
NVIDIA posts beta versions of their drivers to be tested over several weeks. These drivers usually include important features and fixes but also sometimes include known issues or regressions that make them unsuitable or too risky for us to consider inclusion in the nvidia-current-updates package.

However certain commercial Linux games require features/fixes present only in these NVIDIA beta drivers at the time of their release. Ubuntu users who purchase these games currently have to manually install the beta driver (or wait a month or two for it to appear in -updates). Providing these drivers via nvidia-experimental will enable them to install and run the game within the Ubuntu packaging system.

[Fix]
The nvidia-experimental binary package is established (provided by the nvidia-graphics-drivers-experimental source package) for quantal 12.10 and precise 12.04. This uses the packaging scripts from nvidia-current-updates, with the renamed package and new .run files.

The nvidia-experimental package will be visible to users via Jockey as normal. When a user installs this package, any other nvidia drivers will be disabled. They will remain on nvidia-experimental until they upgrade to a new Ubuntu release or LTS point release, at which point they'll be returned to nvidia-current. They can of course manually switch from nvidia-experimental back to nvidia-current or nvidia-current-updates if they wish.

[Regression Potential]
The reason we're adding this package in the first place is because of concerns that beta drivers will have a high risk of regressions. Thus, users need to be aware they are taking these risks when they opt-in to the driver.

As mentioned above, nvidia-current and nvidia-current-updates will still be available to them in case they have problems. In a worst case scenario they may need to do this from a recovery session.