Comment 9 for bug 704597

"should it be possible to remove nvidia-common and install the upstream driver? I think it should."

I disagree. The changes to the nvidia packaging scripts that happened starting with Lucid were not done just to clean them up (the old ones were messy) -- they were done to make it safer and easier to switch between drivers when necessary. It is known that the nvidia-installer actually overwrites and destroys some xorg/mesa files. Now, as long as the user continues to use the nvidia-installer forever this is no problem. But if they ever want to switch to Nouveau or Vesa or whatever (maybe they change graphics cards) they may actually have to do a wipe/reload.

The nvidia-installer is a blunt-force instrument whose purpose is to get its driver working to the exclusion of everything that might dare to stand in its way. My belief is that most users do not understand any of this and are doing dangerous things, they wrongly believe are trivial, without understanding the implications of their actions.

The Mandriva/Ubuntu packaging scripts make it easy and safe to switch between drivers without overwriting anything, just with a couple of clicks. Now, all of that said, if someone has gone to the trouble of researching the command-line override that I mentioned earlier, they're still going to damage their system by using the nvidia-installer, but at least they know that.

Nvidia itself seems to be aware of all of this and doesn't recommend using its installer: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=72490