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NVIDIA released today the NVIDIA 550.54.14 graphics driver for GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris platforms, a major update that introduces many new features and improvements.
Highlights of the NVIDIA 550.54.14 graphics driver include support for R8, GR88, and YCbCr GBM formats, support for transparent huge pages for the text section when available, experimental HDMI 10-bits per component support, and an application profile to improve KWin performance on hybrid GPU systems.
It also adds support for HDR signaling via the HDR_OUTPUT_METADATA and Colorspace per-connector DRM properties when loading nvidia-drm with the modeset=1 parameter, support for PRIME render offload to Vulkan Wayland WSI, and support for the CTM, DEGAMMA_LUT, and GAMMA_LUT DRM-KMS CRTC properties used by the “Night Light” feature in GNOME and the “Night Color” feature in KDE Plasma on Wayland.
Other new features include support for virtual reality displays, such as SteamVR, on Wayland compositors that support DRM leasing, support for the NVIDIA VDPAU driver on Xwayland, and support for the EGL_ANDROID_native_fence_sync EGL, VK_EXTERNAL_SEMAPHORE_HANDLE_TYPE_SYNC_FD_BIT, and VK_EXTERNAL_FENCE_HANDLE_TYPE_SYNC_FD_BIT Vulkan extensions.
Moreover, this update adds support for the VK_KHR_video_encode_queue, VK_KHR_video_encode_h264, VK_KHR_video_encode_h265, and VK_KHR_video_maintenance1 Vulkan extensions, improves support for Vulkan applications, and addresses an issue that caused corrupted window decorations in some apps when running on the GNOME desktop environment.
NVIDIA 550.54.14 optimizes the X driver headless framerate limiter to closely mimic the upstream behavior and prevent it from activating in inconvenient situations, adds beta-quality support for GeForce and Workstation GPUs to the open kernel modules, and adds experimental support for runtime D3 (RTD3) power management on Desktop GPUs.
Also experimental is support for framebuffer consoles provided by nvidia-drm to replace the Linux boot console driven by a system framebuffer driver like efifb or vesafb on kernels that implement drm_fbdev_generic_setup anddrm_aperture_remove_conflicting_pci_framebuffers.
Various bugs have been addressed to improve support for video games like Halo Infinite, Horizon Zero Dawn, Forza Horizon 5, Forza Horizon 4, Hogwarts Legacy, and Metro Exodus, support for some Wayland apps on Maxwell, Volta, and Pascal series GPUs, support for VRR displays, VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) support on Wayland, Gamescope support for the NVIDIA Open GPU Kernel modules, setting of backlight brightness levels, a UI corruption in the nvidia-installer, and support for games built on the Source 2 engine.
Some more bugs have been fixed in this release, including a bug that caused HDMI FRL displays to flicker or blank when enabling VRR with 8 bits per color channel, a bug that prevented the nvidia-installer from honoring the --gbm-backend-dir command line option, as well as two other bugs related to WSI (Window System Integration) X11 swap chain.
Last but not least, the NVIDIA 550.54.14 graphics driver brings support for installing the driver while an existing NVIDIA driver is already loaded. For more details, check out the release notes, from where you can also download the NVIDIA 550.54.14 graphics driver for 64-bit or ARM64 (AArch64) systems, as well as FreeBSD and Solaris platforms.
Image credits: NVIDIA Corporation
Last updated 2 months ago
