NVIDIA Pre-Releases A New Linux Driver

The NVIDIA crew working on their proprietary Linux driver have just pre-released a new build, NVIDIA 270.41.03. This Linux driver update mainly adds support for a number of new GeForce / Quadro GPUs.

The list of newly supported hardware is huge: GeForce GT 520, GeForce GT 525M, GeForce GT 520M, GeForce GT 445M, GeForce GT 530, GeForce 405, GeForce GTX 590, GeForce GTX 550 Ti, GeForce GT 420, GeForce GT 440, GeForce GTX 470M, GeForce GTX 485M, GeForce GT 550M, GeForce GT 555M, NVS 4200M, Quadro 1000M, and Quadro 2000M.

The only other change in this 270.41.03 build compared to the last 270.30 Linux driver is fixing a bug that would cause the X.Org Server to hang every 49.7 days on 32-bit systems. Yep, an odd bug.

What's also interesting though from the new hardware enablement is that the GeForce GT 520 and NVIDIA NVS 4200 are sporting a new VDPAU feature-set, classified as D.

Dean Hilkewich, better known as "Deanjo" in our forums, who is usually spot-on with his comments regarding NVIDIA's Linux support, says that WebM may soon be coming to VDPAU as part of this new feature-set. This is also good news since VP8/WebM acceleration over VDPAU might come to Gallium3D this summer for open-source drivers.

These comments were made in our forums.

This new NVIDIA Linux driver release can be downloaded for Linux x86 and Linux x86_64.