What is the NVIDIA Server Driver?

In the Software & Updates app in Ubuntu 20.04, in the Additional Drivers tab, there is an NVIDIA Server Driver option that I don't remember seeing in previous Ubuntu releases. The package name is nvidia-driver-440-server.

What are the differences between this and nvidia-driver-440?

2 Answers

Using apt-file list on the two packages, the files are identical -- the only difference is the name of the location, /usr/share/doc/nvidia-driver-440 vs. /usr/share/doc/nvidia-driver-440-server

Using apt-cache depends, the non-server metapackage has only the below five additional dependencies:

linux-modules-nvidia-440-aws
linux-modules-nvidia-440-azure
linux-modules-nvidia-440-gcp
linux-modules-nvidia-440-oem-20.04
linux-modules-nvidia-440-oracle 

--Looks like the ...server is a subset of the driver package without some possible vendor/cloud support.

1

The nvidia-driver-440 meta package includes i386 libraries whereas the nvidia-driver-440-server meta package does not. These are required for running Steam.

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