Also available for FreeBSD and Solaris platforms

May 19, 2016 21:00 GMT  ·  By

Just a few minutes ago, May 19, 2016, Nvidia released a new Beta graphics driver for Unix operating systems, the first in the upcoming 367.x series, supporting Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris platforms.

The Nvidia 367.18 Beta proprietary graphics driver is all about bug fixes. It patches many of the breadcrumbs left from 364 driver series, the latest short-lived version, which users can install for their GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris operating systems as an alternative to the long-lived 361 branch (the recommended version of the driver).

As expected, most of the changes are implemented in the Linux version of the driver. Among the most important additions, we can mention the addition of the NV_robustness_video_memory_purge extension, allowing OpenGL apps to become aware of purged contents of BOs and FBOs that reside in the GPU memory, during power events or mode switching.

The bug that prevented HDMI 2.0 4K monitors from waking up from hot-replug or sleep has been resolved in the Nvidia 367.18 Beta driver. Then, a minimum kernel requirement of Linux 2.6.32 has been added to the nvidia-uvm.ko, the Nvidia Unified Virtual Memory kernel module, and there's also better support for G-SYNC monitors, along with numerous improvements to OpenGL applications.

Still no support for GTX 1080 and GTK 1070 GPUs

At the moment of writing this article, the changelog for the Nvidia 367.18 Beta graphics driver doesn't mention anything about support for newer GPUs (Graphics Processing Units), such as the recently unveiled GTX 1080 and GTX 1070. Nevertheless, there's still time for Nvidia to implement support for these models until the 367 series hits the long-lived channel.

Until then, if you want to test the Nvidia 367.18 Beta driver, you can download the installers for GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris operating systems right now, but it is not recommended to do so as it might crash your computer. We suggest waiting for the final release to hit the streets, which should happen in the coming weeks.