Nvidia Drivers – Difference Between Nvidia Driver Version 173 and Current

At least for my part, I believe this is solved.

Recently, the driver I was reading much about - 173.14.35 - was released in a means that I could access and install using apt-get. The link in the original question leads to the announcement that nvidia-173 on precise-proposed has been updated to xxx.xx.35, and so it's a matter of following the directions listed on this page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed

As this is a rather new fix, I will not guarantee it works for everyone with a legacy Nvidia card under Ubuntu 12.04. But for my money this was far favorable to downgrading Xorg or rolling back to an older OS.

[recommended] is recommended

Generally, recommended is the best course of action.

If you have a specific bug, file a bug.

[recommended] is targeted to work for the largest number of users with recent hardware. It may or may not work for this problem.

I post it as an answer in hopes that someone with minor problems introduced by a post-release driver would at least try the recommended driver instead (e.g. there was an issue for ATI at one point where the post-release driver failed to install and broke everything, but the recommended driver worked mostly).

If it solves your problem, great. If it doesn't, I leave it here as a recommendation for other users to try who insist on edge drivers before trying out the recommended ones. I hope you understand the reasoning.