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NVIDIA today just released a big new stable driver for Linux with 450.57. It pulls in a whole bunch of big features from the recent 450.51 Beta.

Compared with the Beta, it looks like it's mostly the same plus a few extra fixes. However, it's worth a reminder now it's stable because everyone should be able to upgrade knowing it's a supported driver version. NVIDIA 450.57 is exciting for a few reasons. One of which is the inclusion of support for NVIDIA NGX, which brings things like DLSS to their Linux drivers.

There's also now Image Sharpening support for OpenGL and Vulkan, support for Vulkan direct-to-display on DisplayPort displays which are connected via DisplayPort Multi-Stream Transport (DP-MST), various VDPAU improvements, PRIME enhancements like support for PRIME Synchronization when using displays driven by the x86-video-amdgpu driver as PRIME display offload sinks along with "Reverse PRIME" support too.

On the bug fix side, one of the big ones is that is should be a smoother Wayland experience as NVIDIA fixed a bug that could cause a KDE Plasma session to crash when running under Wayland. They also fixed a bug that prevented X11 EGL displays from being reinitialized. Another KDE issue was also solved, as after some investigation the NVIDIA team found that KDE panels freezing when compositing was disabled was a problem in their driver so that was fixed too.

See the release notes here.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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damarrin Jul 10, 2020
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The thing I’m missing from nvidia right now is async reprojection support so I can play HL Alyx at high settings.

The thing I’m missing from any and all AMD-gfx systems I have (2 of them) is being able to boot every time I turn on the computer and being able to keep using it after I’ve booted.

Decisions, decisions.


Last edited by damarrin on 10 July 2020 at 6:33 am UTC
jens Jul 10, 2020
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There is also a new version of the driver from the Vulkan Developement branch out: version 450.56.01, see
https://developer.nvidia.com/vulkan-driver

Very tempting to install this one from the installer, though I'm afraid that removing it and going back to a driver from repositories fails. Does anyone has experience with that? Fedora 32 here.
Shmerl Jul 10, 2020
Quoting: TheRiddickI'm quite excited about the future of DLSS because lots of other industries are noticing the huge benefits to such technology

I'm not. It's just a way to work around the lack of compute power that's needed for higher resolutions, and as usual it's overhyped by Nvidia. In practice, DLSS can't replace proper GPU compute units and if your card is lower end, your quality will be lower, DLSS or not.

To put it differently, DLSS is just another marketing gimmick, not a technology that can actually improve games quality.

Instead of overhyped gimmicks, GPU makers should work on improving compute power if they are so insistent that higher resolutions are necessary. Otherwise it makes sense to stick to resolutions on which image quality can be properly maintained.


Last edited by Shmerl on 10 July 2020 at 7:10 am UTC
TheRiddick Jul 10, 2020
Quoting: ShmerlTo put it differently, DLSS is just another marketing gimmick, not a technology that can actually improve games quality.

Have you even tried DLSS 2.0? (and 3.0 down the pipe will be better)

Your comments strongly suggest you've only ever read about it or seen a very early version of it. Its NOT a gimmick and like I said, many industries are moving towards using lower resolution images to enhance to higher resolution with impressive results.

And it does improve quality, again, you're clearly someone who has not been keeping up to date with DLSS and other similar machine deep learning image enhancing tech's (basically same as DLSS but without NVIDIA drm).

Quoting: ShmerlInstead of over-hyped gimmicks(not), GPU makers should work on improving compute power .

Why not do both? MEME

Why waste compute power? games don't need loads of GPU compute power, ray tracing uses some of the compute potential, still room under the hood, use it.


Last edited by TheRiddick on 10 July 2020 at 7:40 am UTC
Eike Jul 10, 2020
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Quoting: Avehicle7887In their own way Nvidia's Linux support is pretty good, and I've been mostly trouble free. There are however a few things which affect me and I also dislike, nominally having to re-install the driver after a kernel update (and I do those a lot), then there's the occasional issue with the driver refusing to install on latest kernels (my Nvidia system is still at kernel 5.5.19 cause of that).

The driver adapts automatically to a new kernel for me (thanks to DKMS I think).

*edit* I'm running kernel 5.6.14 on Debian Buster with backports.


Last edited by Eike on 10 July 2020 at 7:45 am UTC
dubigrasu Jul 10, 2020
So I've seen what NGX can do and the results are really stunning, mind blowing. Definitely a leap forward, at least from my amateur/consumer point of view.
But I wonder what this "support" means for us (Linux). AFAIK all the available software was Windows only. Granted, I didn't looked too much into it.
Is there any functionality (as of right now) available for Linux, or at least planned? I mean, the support was implemented for a reason, no?
Luke_Nukem Jul 10, 2020
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: Avehicle7887In their own way Nvidia's Linux support is pretty good, and I've been mostly trouble free. There are however a few things which affect me and I also dislike, nominally having to re-install the driver after a kernel update (and I do those a lot), then there's the occasional issue with the driver refusing to install on latest kernels (my Nvidia system is still at kernel 5.5.19 cause of that).

The driver adapts automatically to a new kernel for me (thanks to DKMS I think).

*edit* I'm running kernel 5.6.14 on Debian Buster with backports.

DKMS will rebuild the driver from module source when required. This means that on rebooting to a new kernel, the first boot of that kernel may take a little longer while the module is rebuilt. Although Ubuntu and derivatives seem to rebuild all DKMS modules when the new kernel is installed rather than at boot (I don't know about other distros).

I've been running the Nvidia drivers on Ubuntu through manual install for a while now, if there's one thing I can say it's that Nvidia has been painless to install since... I dunno, 2002? That's when I started running Linux and Nvidia anyway - ATi was absolute bollocks on Linux then.
Shmerl Jul 10, 2020
Quoting: TheRiddickHave you even tried DLSS 2.0? (and 3.0 down the pipe will be better)

Your comments strongly suggest you've only ever read about it

I don't have Nvidia cards. And yes, I've read various reviews which confirm what is really self explanatory. There is no magic replacement for compute power. If you increase resolution, reconstructed image can only be an approximation, no matter how much machine learning you'll throw at it. That's just how it works by definition.

So it doesn't increase quality, it only tries to mask its degradation due to compute power of the card not being adequate for a given resolution. That's a fake approach to quality and not something anyone should be cheering for. I'd stick to approach of matching given resolution with required compute power, not to gimmicks that degrade it.

Quoting: TheRiddickWhy waste compute power? games don't need loads of GPU compute power, ray tracing uses some of the compute potential, still room under the hood, use it.

Because I'm not buying some koolaid posing as quality.

Games that need more compute power can run at reasonable resolutions. Not in some overstretched mode with worse quality.


Last edited by Shmerl on 10 July 2020 at 8:09 am UTC
herbert Jul 10, 2020
Quoting: Shmerl
Quoting: TheRiddickHave you even tried DLSS 2.0? (and 3.0 down the pipe will be better)

Your comments strongly suggest you've only ever read about it

I don't have Nvidia cards. And yes, I've read various reviews which confirm what is really self explanatory. There is no magic replacement for compute power. If you increase resolution, reconstructed image can only be an approximation, no matter how much machine learning you'll throw at it. That's just how it works by definition.

So it doesn't increase quality, it only tries to mask its degradation due to compute power of the card not being adequate for a given resolution. That's a fake approach to quality and not something anyone should be cheering for. I'd stick to approach of matching given resolution with required compute power, not to gimmicks that degrade it.

Quoting: TheRiddickWhy waste compute power? games don't need loads of GPU compute power, ray tracing uses some of the compute potential, still room under the hood, use it.

Because I'm not buying some koolaid posing as quality.

Games that need more compute power can run at reasonable resolutions. Not in some overstretched mode with worse quality.
As he said you just missing the point. It does increase quality if you set lower settings.

Machine learning here is just kind of regression that predicts some pixels instead of calculating everything. And indeed it's not perfect like any type of interpolation.

Why do you want to waste energy power when you can have an almost as good render but with higher FPS ? What NVIDIA achieved is quite impressive and I can't imagine how long their neural network training must have taken.
Eike Jul 10, 2020
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Quoting: ShmerlThere is no magic replacement for compute power. If you increase resolution, reconstructed image can only be an approximation, no matter how much machine learning you'll throw at it. That's just how it works by definition.

Yes, obviously. Every computer graphic trying to mimic reality is an approximation, by the way.

The technology is better at creating a higher resolution image then current technologies by what I've seen. If you want to buy a card that can compute a 8K 240Hz resolution with supersampling anti-aliasing, nobody is keeping you from doing so.

I don't understand you negativity. What are you fearing?


Last edited by Eike on 10 July 2020 at 8:41 am UTC
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