14 DAY TRIAL // NVIDIA has just announced that a new beta version of its driver for the Linux platform, 337.19, has been released and is ready for testing.
The new driver from NVIDIA is not really a big one, but it does feature some interesting fixes, including one implemented for 4K resolutions, which encountered some problems.
NVIDIA maintains a number of separate branches, which makes the entire process a little bit confusing. The main driver that is used by most and that is present in most repositories out there is the Long Lived Branch, which is now at version 331.67. This is rarely updated and for good reason, as it's been proven stable.
The next one is the Short Lived Branch, which is now at version 334.21. Unlike the previous branch, this one is updated on a constant basis and this is where most of the exciting stuff gets implemented.
Despite the fact that the Short Lived Branch looks like a Beta, it's not. There is also a Beta build, which gathers all the latest fixes and changes, mostly stuff that hasn't been proven to work properly just yet. If the changes work as they should, they make it further down the line, to the Short Lived Branch.
NVIDIA also provides some Legacy GPU versions that are designed to work with very old hardware, so if you have old video cards you might want to check those first.
According to the changelog of the NVIDIA 337.19 Beta driver, a bug that was causing the mode validation to fail for 4K resolutions, over HDMI, has been fixed, new nvidia-settings command line controls for over- and under-clocking attributes have been added, a number of cosmetic issues have been fixed in the clock control user interface of the nvidia-settings, and support has been added for the GLX_EXT_stereo_tree extension.
“Support has been enabled for using Unified Back Buffer (UBB) and 3D Stereo with the composite extension on Quadro cards. Using stereo with a composite manager requires a stereo-aware composite manager. Otherwise, only the left eye of stereo applications will be displayed,” also reads the changelog.
Check out the announcement for a complete list of fixes and improvements. You can download NVIDIA Linux Display Driver 337.19 Beta for Linux 32-bit and 64-bit. Keep in mind that you will need to manually install the drivers in your system. Remember that this is a development version and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.