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I see this for my drivers on my Ubuntu 18.04. So I'm using this 

nvidia-driver-440

Is this the Nvidia made driver or the Nouveau one? I think it is Nvidia's one because the Nouveau one is on the bottom. But it says (open source) instead (proprietary). Please clarify.

enter image description here

karel
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croraf
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    If you look at the PPA they come from, it states that they are Proprietary Development GPU Drivers. https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers Probably a bug in the way that they are listed. – Terrance Nov 03 '19 at 16:49

2 Answers2

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nvidia-driver-390 and nvidia-driver-430 are proprietary Nvidia graphics drivers either of which can be installed from the default Ubuntu 18.04 repositories. Nvidia 390 driver and Nvidia 430 driver are also marked as proprietary not open source drivers in my Ubuntu 18.04 Additional Drivers tab of Software & Updates. Nvidia 440 driver (nvidia-driver-440) comes from ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa which also has nvidia-driver-390, nvidia-driver-410, nvidia-driver-415, nvidia-driver-430 and nvidia-driver-435.

I don't have any Nvidia PPAs enabled in my software sources, so I assume that both Nvidia 390 driver and Nvidia 430 driver are identified as proprietary is the default in Ubuntu 18.04. In the case of nvidia-driver-430 this package is identified as Copied from ubuntu bionic in Primary Archive for Ubuntu in the PPA however it is also identified as open source in Additional Drivers while the default repository nvidia-driver-430 package is identified as proprietary in Additional Drivers. If both of these drivers were created from the same source, they both should be identified as proprietary drivers instead of one driver being identified as open source and the other driver identified as proprietary.

The recommended proprietary Nvidia graphics driver for your computer's graphics processor can be installed from the terminal with the following commands:

sudo ubuntu-drivers install  
sudo reboot

When installing a proprietary graphics driver, it is not necessary to uninstall the built-in Nouveau open source graphics driver. The two graphics drivers can be installed alongside each other allowing the open source graphics driver to be used as a fallback alternative in case there is a problem using the proprietary graphics driver.

The ubuntu-drivers install command installs drivers that are appropriate for automatic installation including their dependencies, and the Nvidia driver will also be updated automatically when an update is available.

karel
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    What about 440 that is currently installed? Is it also propriatery? Why does it say open source, and that no propriatery is installed? – croraf Nov 03 '19 at 17:57
  • Nvidia 440 driver is not found in my Ubuntu 18.04 terminal, so maybe it was installed from somewhere else than from the default Ubuntu 18.04 repositories, for example from a PPA. Nvidia 390 driver and Nvidia 440 driver are marked as proprietary not open source drivers in my Ubuntu 18.04 Additional Drivers tab of Software & Updates. – karel Nov 03 '19 at 18:05
  • Strange. Indeed, 440 is not found on nvidia pages, only 430.50 for my graphics card. – croraf Nov 03 '19 at 18:23
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    @croraf The 440 driver comes from the Graphics Drivers PPA that is not owned by NVIDIA. I am thinking that it is the latest development driver from NVIDIA, but that NVIDIA themselves have not posted it up yet. – Terrance Nov 03 '19 at 19:23
  • @Terrance I found out something. I found on Nvidia site that 440 is still in Beta, that's why they didn't recommend it to me as the latest for my video card. While Ubuntu is giving the 440 as an option. – croraf Nov 03 '19 at 21:27
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    Not only that but if you stick with sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall it fetches all the recommended proprietary graphics driver packages for your computer's hardware automatically from the default Ubuntu repositories, so there's no more unrecommended beta packages hassle. – karel Nov 03 '19 at 21:29
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The only open source Nvidia driver is nouveau. It is included in Linux kernel.

All installable Nvidia drivers are proprietary no matter where they come from or how they are listed in applications.

The Software & Updates until the recent Ubuntu releases shows all packages coming from a PPA as open source.

Pilot6
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  • I think they basically are open source. If they are in PPA they should have disclosed source. But they are also propriatery regarding the license. – croraf Dec 09 '19 at 18:42
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    There is a blob there. Some small part is in source. If you look into PPA, you'll see that there is a binary .run file. It is closed-source. – Pilot6 Dec 09 '19 at 18:46