Free Download - New Nvidia Video Drivers for Linux Bring OpenGL 3.0 Support

Nvidia Linux Display Driver 180.29

One month ago Nvidia released their 180.22 video drivers for Linux OSes, which brought initial support for Linux kernel 2.6.28. Last night (February 11th) Nvidia proudly presented yet another improved version of their proprietary video driver for the Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris open source operating systems. The new version, Nvidia 180.29, offers full OpenGL 3.0 support for all GeForce 8 and newer graphics cards. It also provides support for the following GPUs: GeForce 9300 GE and Quadro NVS 420. The Nvidia 180.29 video driver was also updated yesterday, by the Ubuntu developers, in the daily build of the upcoming Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope). Among other features brought by the new Nvidia 180.29 video driver we can notice:

· Improved OpenGL performance on workstations;
· Added an error checker of the layer data in VDPAU's VdpVideoMixerRender function;
· The VDPAU setup handling on multiple GPUs was improved;
· The GPU video memory handling coordination, between VDPAU and Nvidia X driver was improved;
· The X driver was updated to support some GPUs that were not recognized;
· The nvidia-installer received the ability to run various post- and pre-installation hooks;
· The metamode parser of the X driver was updated to permit mode names with periods (i.e. '.'s);
· Added power management workaround and better compatibility with newer Linux 2.6 kernels.

Nvidia 180.29 display driver for Linux also fixes the following issues:

· Fixed a VDPAU crash caused by some invalid MPEG-2 streams in the 64-bit version of the drivers;
· Fixed a VDPAU issue which caused display corruption while decoding MPEG-2 video streams;
· Fixed an acceleration issue (Xid errors) in the X driver for all GeForce 6 and 7 graphics cards;
· Fixed a performance issue for integrated GPUs;
· Fixed a stability issue for OpenGL programs that used FSAA;
· Fixed AGP GPUs initialization issue, which caused them to be used in PCI compatibility mode;
· Fixed a stability issue when modifying the clock settings via the Coolbits interface;
· Fixed a hotkey switching issue on newer mobile GPUs;
· Fixed a VDPAU green screen issue;
· Fixed a VDPAU issue which caused it to crash after a restart of the X server, on various GPUs;
· Fixed a VDPAU crash when DisplayPort devices were used;
· Fixed a VDPAU hang issue when the blit-based presentation queue was used on multiple GPUs;
· Fixed another VDPAU hang issue using the overlay;
· Fixed a VDPAU issue which caused the overlay-based presentation queue to not be used on component video connected displays.

How to install the Nvidia video drivers?

Log out of your current session and hit the CTRL+ALT+F1 key combination in order to enter a text-mode session. Log in as root (System Administrator), go to the folder where you've downloaded the Nvidia driver installer (see below for links), and type:

sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-180.29-pkg1.run (for x86 users)
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-180.29-pkg2.run (for AMD64 users)

Then, follow the on-screen instructions to install the Nvidia video driver. Please note that the Linux kernel headers and a GCC compiler will be required to complete the installation!

Download the Nvidia display driver 180.29 for the x86 architecture right now from Softpedia.

Download the Nvidia display driver 180.29 for the AMD64/EM64T architectures right now from Softpedia.

Download the Nvidia display driver 180.29 for the FreeBSD systems right now from Softpedia.