Story

The problem with the proprietary NVIDIA driver is that linking the final .ko violates the GPL-2. When you do it on your own system, it's not a problem because you aren't redistributing, and who are you going to sue: yourself? This is why there are no distros that contain a prelinked .ko. When you install it on any distro, including Ubuntu, you get a package that compiles and links it on the fly.

In the past there were livecds that would include the proprietary NVIDIA driver by downloading, compiling, and linking it while you waited. Can you not `apt-get install` it on an Ubuntu livecd still?