After quite a long development period, Nvidia finally decided to make Linux users happy again, by releasing a few minutes ago a brand-new and improved version of its graphics driver, Nvidia 190.42. As you see in the title, the big news is that Nvidia 190.42 now supports OpenGL 3.2. But, it also introduces support for the following video cards: GeForce G102M, GeForce GT 220, GeForce G210, GeForce G210M, GeForce GT 230M, GeForce GT 240M, GeForce GTS 250M and GeForce GTS 260M.

However, the above is not even close to what the new driver has to offer. Here are some of the most important new features in Nvidia 190.42:

· Newer Debian-based Linux distributions that use the /usr/lib32 path instead of the /emul/ia32-linux one, for the 32-bit library, are now detected by the Nvidia installer;
· More modes can now be validated by the Nvidia X driver, on GeForce 8 or later graphics cards;
· GLX support for OpenGL 3.2 was added;
· Added GLX_ARB_create_context_profile;
· Support for the IgnoreEDIDChecksum option was added, and it can be used to force the Nvidia X driver to accept an EDID if the checksum is invalid;
· GPU's fan speed configuration is now supported;
· Added support for decoding MPEG-4 Part 2, DivX 5 and DivX 4 videos to the VDPAU feature;
· Added GLX protocol support for various OpenGL extensions;
· GPU PowerMizer Mode can now be configured from the nvidia-settings or Nvidia Control Panel utility, on GeForce 8 or later video cards;
· NVIDIA Quadro SDI Capture is now supported;
· Support for Xorg Server 1.7.0 RC1 was added;
· Updated the VDPAU feature to better decode MPEG and H.264 streams, on GPUs with VDPAU set B;
· Updated the VDPAU feature to support higher quality video scaling algorithm.

For the complete changelog, please visit the official release announcement.

How to install the Nvidia video drivers on your Linux box?

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 for your architecture (see below for links), and type the following corresponding command:

For 32-bit users:

sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-190.42-pkg1.run

For 64-bit users:

sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-190.42-pkg2.run

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 Linux display driver 190.42 for the x86 architecture right now from Softpedia.

Download the Nvidia Linux display driver 190.42 for the AMD64/EM64T architectures right now from Softpedia.

Download the Nvidia FreeBSD display driver 190.42 for the x86 architectures right now from Softpedia.

Download the Nvidia Solaris display driver 190.42 for the x86 architectures right now from Softpedia.