NVIDIA released today the beta version of the upcoming NVIDIA 560 graphics driver series for Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris systems, the first release to default to the open-source GPU kernel modules.
NVIDIA 560 promises an updated nvidia-installer that features the NVIDIA Open-Source GPU kernel modules by default on systems with NVIDIA GPUs that support both the proprietary and open kernel modules, such as NVIDIA Turing, Ampere, Ada Lovelace, Blackwell, Grace Hopper, and Hopper.
It also promises support for the EGL_KHR_platform_x11 and EGL_EXT_platform_xcb extensions on Xwayland, a PipeWire backend to NvFBC to enable it to work on Wayland compositors that support screencasting via XDG Desktop Portal, and support for multiple concurrent clients to NvFBC direct capture.
On top of that, NVIDIA 560 brings DRM-KMS explicit synchronization support via the IN_FENCE_FD mode setting property, VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) support for Wayland on pre-Volta GPUs, VRR support on laptops with the open GPU kernel modules, and support for reporting Vulkan information to the nvidia-settings control panel.
Among other changes, NVIDIA 560 will update the glXWaitVideoSyncSGI() function to be more efficient to further reduce frame stutter in some KDE Plasma configurations with GSP offload, requires Vulkan header files when compiling nvidia-settings from source, and fixes several bugs and issues.
Check out the release notes for more details about the changes included in the beta version of the NVIDIA 560 graphics driver series, which you can download from the same page. However, please keep in mind that this is a pre-release version, so don’t install it on a production machine!
Image credits: NVIDIA Corporation (edited by Marius Nestor)
Last updated 9 hours ago