Anyone know why Nvidia is late with their latest driver in their OpenSUSE repository? ftp://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/leap/42.1/
Their latest stable driver 364.19 was released over a week ago.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-364.19-Released
And?
364.19 is the latest version in the “Short Lived Branch”, while the nvidia repo follows the “Long Lived Branch” (where 361.42 is the latest version).
So they are not late.
See Unix Drivers | NVIDIA .
Ok. That explains that. Waiting for it to play the latest Tomb Raider which recommend using this version of the driver.
When will LLB (which now is 361.48) catch up with current SLB (which now is 364.19) ? Is there a different repository that serves up SLB versions, or would I need to install that driver the hard-way?
No idea, you would probably need to ask NVidia… 
Is there a different repository that serves up SLB versions, or would I need to install that driver the hard-way?
The latter.
Or you could build the RPM packages yourself after modifying them accordingly.
The packages are available and maintained in openSUSE’s OBS instance, without the actual driver though.