NVIDIA Releases Four New Linux Drivers

Written by Michael Larabel in Display Drivers on 27 January 2009 at 03:30 PM EST. Page 1 of 1. 26 Comments.

The NVIDIA 180.22 Linux driver was released less than three weeks ago, but today NVIDIA has released a new 180.xx display driver update. In addition, NVIDIA has updated all three of their legacy display drivers.

The new mainline NVIDIA driver released is version 180.25 and it brings a whole slew of fixes. A bulk of the fixes in the 180.25 driver pertains to VDPAU, or the Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix. The VDPAU fixes in this proprietary Linux driver update range from fixing a green screen to improved handling of mode switches to crashes when using DisplayPort devices. There is also improved error checking in the NVIDIA driver's VDPAU implementation. Furthermore, the 180.25 driver brings improved GPU video memory management between the NVIDIA driver and VDPAU.

Outside of the video realm, the NVIDIA 180.25 display driver promises improved workstation OpenGL performance. This driver also has a few hotkey switching improvements for mobile NVIDIA GPUs. Lastly, there is improved support for the latest Linux 2.6 kernels in this release. What the NVIDIA 180.25 Linux driver lacks, however, is official support for X Server 1.6.

When it comes to NVIDIA's legacy drivers, the GeForce 5 series Linux driver is now at version 173.14.16, the GeForce 2 through GeForce 4 driver is now at 96.43.10, and the driver that supports the original Riva TNT/TNT2 and early GeForce ASICs is now at version 71.86.08. These legacy drivers are made up of just a few fixes -- but noteworthy from the change-log is a Linux 2.6.29 kernel fix and initial support for X Server 1.6 (with the 96.43.10 release).

The latest NVIDIA Linux driver releases are available from the NVIDIA FTP server.

If you enjoyed this article consider joining Phoronix Premium to view this site ad-free, multi-page articles on a single page, and other benefits. PayPal or Stripe tips are also graciously accepted. Thanks for your support.


Related Articles
AMD Quietly Funded A Drop-In CUDA Implementation Built On ROCm: It's Now Open-Source
Trying Out & Benchmarking The New Experimental Intel Xe Linux Graphics Driver
Intel's Open-Source Compute Runtime Performing Increasingly Well Against NVIDIA's Proprietary Linux Driver
Intel Arc Graphics See Faster Performance On Ubuntu 23.10
Raspberry Pi 5 Graphics Continue With Open-Source Driver & Crazy Fast Compared To RPi 4
Initial Benchmarks Of The "NVK" Open-Source NVIDIA Vulkan Driver
About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.