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Following on from the NVIDIA Beta 495.29.05 earlier this month, today NVIDIA has a fresh 495.44 stable driver release that builds upon it with some additional extras. This is the big one for Wayland fans, since it now works with the GBM API.

With this API now hooked up, it should mean a better Wayland experience and it's something that the KDE Plasma team are already working on supporting too.

You will also find in this release an indicator (on supported desktops) for showing Resizable BAR and the minimum Kernel version got bumped from 2.6.32 to 3.10. Additionally these new extensions are supported:

There's also a healthy dose of bug fixes and other changes noted below:

  • Fixed a bug that could cause the X server to crash when starting a new server generation on PRIME configurations.
  • Removed support for NvIFROpenGL. This functionality was deprecated in the 470.xx driver release.
  • Removed libnvidia-cbl.so from the driver package. This functionality is now provided by other driver libraries.
  • Updated nvidia.ko to load even if no supported NVIDIA GPUs are present when an NVIDIA NVSwitch device is detected in the system. Previously, nvidia.ko would fail to load into the kernel if no supported GPUs were present.
  • Fixed a bug in the Vulkan driver where unused input attributes to a vertex shader would corrupt the interpolation qualifiers for the shader.
  • Fixed a bug in the Vulkan driver where individual components of barycentric inputs could not be read.
  • Fixed a bug where VK_NVX_binary_import was advertised as supported on unsupported platforms. This caused calls to vkCreateDevice to fail if applications attempted to enable VK_NVX_binary_import on such platforms.
  • Added a new command line option, "--no-peermem", to nvidia-installer.Selecting this option prevents the installation of the nvidia-peermem kernel module.
  • Fixed a regression which prevented DisplayPort and HDMI 2.1 variable refresh rate (VRR) G-SYNC Compatible monitors from functioning correctly in variable refresh rate mode, resulting in issues such as flickering.
  • Fixed a bug that can cause a kernel crash in SLI Mosaic configurations.

Since this is a stable driver release all users should be okay to upgrade.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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BielFPs Oct 27, 2021
Quoting: slaapliedjeOn FreeBSD 13, if you install it on a system with an Nvidia card, it still defaults to Wayland, but it just crashes when you try to log into KDE (can't remember if Gnome did it too), you have to switch to Xorg then it works fine. Weirdest thing as I'd think sddm wouldn't work as well, but it works fine..
Didn't knew that BSD had wayland too, I remember that the unfortunately side of Wayland was being linux exclusive, nice to know
x_wing Oct 27, 2021
Quoting: 3zekielAs for whether they messed around for 5 years, they did propose the better API, but as far as I saw, no one really came and discussed either ... Or maybe it happened behind curtains. Once again reality is a bit more gray than black or white ... And once again, of course, they acted a bit like divas who expect all attention even when coming late to the party.

Of course, at the very end, the conclusion is that technically their solution does not work as it should, but I was more saying it was not as easy to detemine at the begining. And as always, once a project has taken a certain path, it is often hard to backtract. You need to have the clarity to take a break and look back.

My opinion is that they just had some technical bad choice and perseverated by lack of clarity more than by evil-ness.

This is not only about technical decisions, this is more of an attitude problem with our community. You cannot expect that the community would drop their work on GBM to move to your new "standard" because you failed with your personal endeavor with EGLStreams.

There is no gray area, their strategy from the beginning was to use a solution that adapted well to their driver needs not caring on anyone else. And as I said, this is not an isolated case, it is just the way they do everything: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Nouveau-XDC2017

There is no way we can soft their behavior of all this years. They are simply bully jerks...
3zekiel Oct 27, 2021
Quoting: x_wingThis is not only about technical decisions, this is more of an attitude problem with our community. You cannot expect that the community would drop their work on GBM to move to your new "standard" because you failed with your personal endeavor with EGLStreams.

The attitude issue I agree. Sadly, they are like too many hw vendors who tend to enjoy working behind closed doors and behave like control freaks.

Their last year has however been much more fruitful, with egl wayland and co they seem to work much more in the open. They seem to communicate much more overall, and they directly supported DLSS in proton. I mean, they did not do it out of goodness of their heart (no company does), but it does seem like they are softening to us... Now, time will tell. I still wait that "Big open source announcement" they were supposed to do months and months ago.

I mean, technically speaking open sourcing they freaking driver is still what makes the most sense... Maybe at some point they will realize it, just like they finally did for GBM. One can always dream (and meanwhile buy GPUs from more open source friendly vendors, when they are finally available anyway:P )
Brandonmccoub2 3 years Oct 27, 2021
Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoWhat about 470.82.00?
Anyway, none of two are available for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS yet.
Do you know if the 495 driver is avaliable yet on Ubuntu?
slaapliedje Oct 27, 2021
Quoting: BielFPs
Quoting: slaapliedjeOn FreeBSD 13, if you install it on a system with an Nvidia card, it still defaults to Wayland, but it just crashes when you try to log into KDE (can't remember if Gnome did it too), you have to switch to Xorg then it works fine. Weirdest thing as I'd think sddm wouldn't work as well, but it works fine..
Didn't knew that BSD had wayland too, I remember that the unfortunately side of Wayland was being linux exclusive, nice to know
You know, I had heard people insist that Gnome was also becoming Linux only because of its tie to systemd, but FreeBSD still has an (almost) current version of Gnome.

I kept wanting to get it set up on some 2008/2009 macbooks someone gave me, but I did not have much luck.
shanedav4 Oct 29, 2021
It's still not an install an go to get it working. You have to compile and install a couple dev version libraries to get it working. One is Xwayland. Forget about installing it on anything but the most bleeding edge rolling release distros. I would say it is still very much beta.
Redface Oct 29, 2021
Quoting: Brandonmccoub2
Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoWhat about 470.82.00?
Anyway, none of two are available for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS yet.
Do you know if the 495 driver is avaliable yet on Ubuntu?

Both 470.82.00 and 495.44 are in proposed for all supported releases from 18.04 up and the development for 22.04, see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-470/+bug/1948025

There is always a bugreport tracking the new driver https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-470/+bug/1948025 for 495, I tend to find them on https://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu-archive/pending-sru.html searching for nvidia or whatever I am looking for.

Soon they will come as normal updates unless there are problems delaying that. If you want to try them from proposed read https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed , do not just enable proposed and get everything from there.

I just installed 495 on 21.10 and seems to be ok, I tried Stellaris 64bit, Shadowrun 32bit and a youtube video
Still on xorg, I am going to try with wayland now
Torqachu Oct 31, 2021
not knowing where to write...
For kepler card users on archlinux/derivate the 470 drivers have appeared in aur.
who wants to be a guinea pig?
cookiEoverdose Oct 31, 2021
Epic Games Store (Lutris) won't open for me on 495, going back to 470 it works fine.
slaapliedje Nov 2, 2021
Quoting: shanedav4It's still not an install an go to get it working. You have to compile and install a couple dev version libraries to get it working. One is Xwayland. Forget about installing it on anything but the most bleeding edge rolling release distros. I would say it is still very much beta.
470 seems to already be in Debian Testing / Sid. Only a matter of time until it is backported to Bullseye. Pretty sure it doesn't require bleeding edge, just wait for your distribution to package it.
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