This year NVIDIA’s official Linux graphics driver enjoyed much more robust Wayland support, their open-source kernel modules have matured greatly and are now being used by default, and their proprietary Vulkan and OpenGL drivers remain in good standing for performant Linux gaming and workstation graphics. NVIDIA’s Linux driver stack had a rather great year.
Continuing on with our traditional end-of-year recaps and lists looking at the most popular news stories for different topics, here is a look at the most popular NVIDIA Linux news of 2024 on Phoronix.
If summing up NVIDIA’s Linux initiatives for 2024 to two items, it easily would come down to the Wayland improvements made this year and their open-source (out-of-tree) kernel modules becoming production capable and ready for prime-time use from Linux gamers to workstation customers and data centers. What will NVIDIA have in store for Linux in 2025? It will be very interesting to see.
NVIDIA’s Open GPU Linux Kernel Driver Will Soon Be The Default For Turing & Newer GPUs
While we are all waiting for the NVIDIA R555 series Linux driver beta that is expected to debut as soon as next week based on prior information with Wayland improvements (explicit sync) and more, with the NVIDIA R560 series Linux driver successor is a very interesting change: NVIDIA is planning on defaulting to using their open-source GPU kernel driver by default for GeForce RTX 2000 “Turing” GPUs and newer.
Ubuntu 24.10 Now Defaults To Wayland On NVIDIA
With Ubuntu 24.10 due for release in October one of the expressed planned changes has been NVIDIA defaulting to using Wayland rather than X11 for the default desktop session. As of this past week the change is now in place for Ubuntu 24.10 daily users that will find Wayland-by-default when using the official NVIDIA Linux graphics driver.
Former Nouveau Lead Developer Joins NVIDIA, Continues Working On Open-Source Driver
Following last year Nouveau receiving support for running with the NVIDIA GSP firmware and initial GeForce RTX 40 series accelerated support, Ben Skeggs of Red Hat unexpectedly resigned as the Nouveau kernel driver maintainer. It turns out this longtime open-source Nouveau driver developer is now employed by NVIDIA Corp and continuing to work on the open-source Linux graphics driver.
NVIDIA Publishes Open-Source Linux Driver Code For GPU Virtualization “vGPU” Support
NVIDIA engineers have sent out an exciting set of Linux kernel patches for enabling NVIDIA vGPU software support for virtual GPU support among multiple virtual machines (VMs). In aiming for upstream-focused Linux support, this NVIDIA vGPU support is built around the adapted Nouveau driver with the code previously posted for splitting up the Nouveau/NVKM driver components.
NVIDIA Shares Wayland Driver Roadmap, Encourages Vulkan Wayland Compositors
At the X.Org Developer’s Conference (XDC 2024) happening this week in Montreal, NVIDIA shared a road-map around their Wayland plans as well as encouraging Wayland compositors to target the Vulkan API.
Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Moving To NVK + Zink For OpenGL On Newer GPUs
Mesa 24.1 Git has landed the initial infrastructure for allowing drivers to choose to using Zink instead for OpenGL via this OpenGL-on-Vulkan implementation. The motivating factor for this latest Mesa work is for using Zink atop the NVK Vulkan driver for newer NVIDIA GPUs.
NVIDIA 550 Linux Beta Driver Released With Many Fixes, VR Displays & Better (X)Wayland
For going along with today’s GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER graphics card launch (Linux review in the days ahead due to late arrival of my RTX 40 series hardware), NVIDIA has published their first R550 series Linux driver beta. The NVIDIA 550.40.07 Linux driver is now available with many bug fixes and a few new features.
NVIDIA Exploring Ways To Better Support An Upstream Kernel Driver
Here’s how an exciting message from a NVIDIA engineer that just hit the mailing list begins: “NVIDIA has been exploring ways to better support the effort for an upstream kernel mode driver for GPUs that are capable of running GSP-RM firmware, since the introduction to Nova.”
Valve Working On Explicit Sync Support For “NVK” NVIDIA Vulkan Driver
In addition to all of the contributions Valve graphics engineers have been making to the open-source Radeon “RADV” Vulkan driver, they have also begun investing in improvements to the open-source Mesa NVIDIA “NVK” Vulkan driver too. With pending patches there is now explicit GPU synchronization support working for the NVK driver in conjunction with their Gamescope compositor.
NVIDIA Promotes Their Open-Source GPU Kernel Driver Support
It’s been a wild two years since NVIDIA began publishing an open-source Linux GPU kernel driver for Turing GPUs and newer. With the latest NVIDIA 555 Linux driver series that open-source kernel driver support is in great shape and NVIDIA today is out with a lengthy blog post promoting it.
NVIDIA 560.35.03 Linux Driver Released With More Wayland Fixes
Building off the prior NVIDIA 560 beta driver releases, the NVIDIA 560.35.03 stable Linux driver was released today for providing the latest official NVIDIA graphics/compute support for Linux systems.
AMD & Intel Team Up For UALink As Open Alternative To NVIDIA’s NVLink
It’s rare for an advanced media briefing to involve representatives from both AMD and Intel, but that happened yesterday. AMD and Intel along with Broadcom have formed the Ultra Accelerator Link “UALink” as a new open standard they are hoping to use to take on NVIDIA’s proprietary NVLink interface.
NVIDIA Developer Opens Feature Pull Request For Open-Source NVK Driver
If your interest didn’t pique enough when the former Nouveau lead developer joined NVIDIA and sent out a big patch series for this originally-reverse-engineered, open-source NVIDIA kernel driver, here’s another plot twist: another NVIDIA engineer opening a merge request adding to the Mesa NVK Vulkan driver.
NVIDIA 555.58 Stable Linux Driver Brings Wayland Explicit Sync, GSP Firmware Default
The NVIDIA 555.58 Linux driver has debuted this morning as the first stable version in the R555 driver series. The NVIDIA 555 Linux driver is the most exciting in recent times with offering Wayland explicit sync support, more stable Wayland support in general, and GSP firmware is now used by default on RTX 20 / Turing and newer GPUs where the GPU System Processor is present.
NVIDIA 560 Linux Driver Beta Released – Defaults To Open GPU Kernel Modules
NVIDIA today released their first Linux beta driver in the new R560 driver release branch. Coming days after their NVIDIA 560 Windows driver, out this morning is the NVIDIA 560.28.03 beta Linux driver.
Even NVIDIA Has Jumped Big On The Open-Source OpenBMC Train
OpenBMC as the Linux Foundation project backed by vendors like Intel / Microsoft / Google / Meta for an open-source BMC firmware stack continues to be a growing success. This alternative to long-used proprietary BMC software stacks continues to grow in popularity with AMD now using it on their reference motherboards and Supermicro being another notable user with some of their server platforms. Not entirely new but been meaning to write about it and NVIDIA talked more openly about it this week: NVIDIA is also a big supporter and user of OpenBMC for their high-end AI/HPC servers and BlueField DPU hardware.
XWayland Nukes The NVIDIA EGLStream Backend
XWayland had targeted both the Generic Buffer Management (GBM) and EGLStream APIs due to NVIDIA not supporting GBM like all of the other Linux drivers. But now that the NVIDIA proprietary Linux graphics driver has been boasting GBM support and advancing with their Wayland platform support in general, XWayland is letting go of the EGLStream mess.
NVIDIA 555.42.02 Linux Beta Brings Wayland Explicit Sync, GSP Firmware Used By Default
It’s coming a week later than anticipated but the NVIDIA R555 Linux driver beta has been released! This is the NVIDIA proprietary Linux driver update that brings Wayland explicit sync support along with a host of other important improvements.
Vulkan 1.3.279 Brings New NVIDIA Extension Co-Engineered By Valve
Vulkan 1.3.279 debuted on Friday with many fixes/clarifications to the specifications plus one new extension.
NVIDIA Outlines Current Wayland Limitations & Upcoming Driver Features
Longtime NVIDIA Linux engineer Aaron Plattner shared a status update on Friday around the current feature parity difference between the NVIDIA driver stack on X11 and under (X)Wayland.
