14 DAY TRIAL // Nvidia on Monday announced the release of a new long-lived graphics driver for Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris-based operating systems, versioned 384.59, adding support for new GPUs, along with a bunch of bug fixes and improvements.
Nvidia 384.59 is now considered the most advanced version of the proprietary graphics driver for GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris platforms, which users should install on their personal computers running a supported Nvidia GPU immediately after reading this article.
The Nvidia 384.59 video driver is here to add support for the Nvidia GeForce GT 1030 and Nvidia GeForce MX150 graphics cards. It also updates nvidia-persistenced to initialize the nvidia-modeset.ko kernel module in addition to the nvidia.ko one when setting persistence mode.
A "Nearest" transform filter is now supported in the X driver
Among other noteworthy improvements that Nvidia implemented in the long-lived Nvidia 384.59 graphics drivers, we can mention an updated nvidia-installer that can now label kernel modules with the "modules_object_t" SELinux file type, and support for a "Nearest" transform filter in the X driver.
"This causes the X driver to use nearest neighbor filtering when performing screen transformations. The filter can be requested through the 'filter' argument to RandR's RRSetCrtcTransform, or through the 'ResamplingMethod' MetaMode token," explain the Nvidia devs in the release notes.
The update also removes support for checking for and downloading any updated Nvidia Linux driver packages, as well as precompiled kernel interfaces from the nvidia-installer as the functionality appears to have been insecure, used through unencrypted FTP and HTTP protocols, and using unmaintained code.
Other than that, Nvidia 384.59 restores some sanity checks that have been accidentally removed from the kernel module build process in the Nvidia 355.06 graphics driver, and extends the information reported by the Nvidia Xinerama X extension to also report PRIME displays.
All users are urged to update to Nvidia 384.59 at their earliest convenience, and you can download the 64-bit or 32-bit Linux binaries, as well as the FreeBSD and Solaris ones right now through our web portal, or directly from Nvidia. The full changelog is attached below if you're curious to see what bugs were squashed in this update.