NVIDIA's OpenGL 3.0 Linux Driver?

Last week OpenGL 3.0 and GLSL 1.30 were released during SIGGRAPH 2008. In that article we expected NVIDIA would be first to provide an OpenGL 3.0 driver due to NVIDIA's involvement with the Khronos Group and their much rumored "Big Bang II" project, but we had no official comment from them at the time of publishing. Though we now have a response from NVIDIA.

Last week at the NVIDIA Developer Zone they released the 177.89 driver with OpenGL 3.0 support for Windows XP and Vista in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. Linux though was missing from the list. When Liaison PR (a PR firm that NVIDIA uses) contacted us to let us know about the Windows driver, we asked them where the Linux driver was... Today we received an answer from Liaison's Julie Morgan.

I just heard back from NVIDIA, who said that they don't ship the drivers but that they are downloadable at the link included in the press release...currently in beta format.

A contradictory statement... They don't ship the driver but it's available for download? On that page is just the Windows XP/Vista drivers, but no mention of Linux at all. However, another source reveals that there may be a new NVIDIA Linux driver out soon. For now, the waiting game continues...