NVIDIA has released a new Linux display driver. The update fixes several bugs, including issues with HDMI FRL displays flickering or blanking when enabling VRR with 8 bits per color channel, corrupted window decorations in some applications, and issues with WSI X11 swapchains. It also addresses Xid errors on Hogwarts Legacy and Forza Horizon 4.

Linux x64 (AMD64/EM64T) Display Driver | 550.54.14 | Linux 64-bit | NVIDIA

Highlights since R550 Beta Release 550.40.07

• Fixed a bug that caused HDMI FRL displays to flicker or blank when enabling VRR with 8 bits per color channel.
  
• Fixed a regression introduced with the 550.40.07 beta driver which caused corrupted window decorations in some applications when running on GNOME.
  
• Fixed a bug where vkAcquireNextImageKHR() was not returning VK_ERROR_OUT_OF_DATE_KHR when it should with WSI X11 swapchains.
  
• Fixed a bug where fences passed to VkSwapchainPresentFenceInfoEXT could signal earlier than expected when a WSI X11 swap chain becomes out of date.
  
• Fixed Xid errors on Hogwarts Legacy and Forza Horizon 4.
  
• Added support for the VK_KHR_video_encode_queue, VK_KHR_video_encode_h264, VK_KHR_video_encode_h265 and VK_KHR_video_maintenance1 extensions.
  
• Fixed a regression which prevented some Vulkan applications from receiving VK_DEVICE_LOST upon a VT switch, which could lead to the application hanging or behaving incorrectly.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented nvidia-installer from honoring the --gbm-backend-dir command line option.
• Fixed an issue that sometimes caused Wayland applications to run at less than one frame per second on Maxwell, Volta, and Pascal series GPUs.
• Fixed a bug that caused an intermittent drop in desktop framerate.
• Fixed a bug that caused "Flip event timeout" messages to be printed to the system log when displays are hotplugged when nvidia-drm is loaded with the `fbdev=1` kernel module parameter.
• Fixed intermittent Xid errors on Horizon Zero Dawn, Metro Exodus, Forza Horizon 5, and Halo Infinite.
• Fixed a bug which prevented the "NoMaxPClkCheck" mode validation token from working on single-link TMDS (e.g. DVI, HDMI) outputs.
• Fixed a bug that allowed VRR displays to be driven below their minimum refresh rate, resulting in a blank or flickering image.
• Added an application profile to improve Kwin performance on hybrid GPU systems by setting OGL_DEDICATED_HW_STATE_PER_CONTEXT=ENABLE_ROBUST.
• Updated the build process for NVIDIA kernel modules to honor the INSTALL_MOD_DIR Kbuild environment variable.
• Added support for R8, GR88 and YCbCr GBM formats.
• Optimized the X driver headless framerate limiter to more closely mimicupstream behavior and prevent it from activating in inconvenient situations. Added a new X config option "LimitFrameRateWhenHeadless" to disable the headless framerate limiter.
• Fixed a bug that prevented Gamescope from running when using the NVIDIA Open GPU Kernel modules.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the installer package from being unpacked on systems where zstd is not installed, when /tmp is mounted noexec.
• Use transparent huge pages when available for the .text section. This is done through madvise() calls, and requires CONFIG_READ_ONLY_THP_FOR_FS.
• Fixed a regression that prevented setting backlight brightness levels.
• Fixed a bug that could lead to UI corruption in nvidia-installer on systems with more than one initramfs file per kernel.
• Fixed a bug that caused games built on the Source 2 engine to hang when running under Xwayland.
• Added experimental HDMI 10 bits per component support; enable by loading nvidia-modeset with `hdmi_deepcolor=1`.
• Added support for HDR signaling via the HDR_OUTPUT_METADATA and Colorspace per-connector DRM properties when nvidia-drm is loaded with the `modeset=1` parameter.
• Added support for PRIME render offload to Vulkan Wayland WSI.
• Added support for the CTM, DEGAMMA_LUT, and GAMMA_LUT DRM-KMS CRTC properties. These are used by features such as the "Night Light" feature in GNOME and the "Night Color" feature in KDE, when they are used as Wayland compositors.
• Added CERTIFIED-quality support for GeForce and Workstation GPUs to open kernel modules. Please see the "Open Linux Kernel Modules" chapter in the README for details.
• Added initial experimental support for runtime D3 (RTD3) power management on Desktop GPUs.  Please see the 'PCI-Express Runtime D3 (RTD3) Power Management' chapter in the README for more details.
• Added support for the EGL_ANDROID_native_fence_sync EGL extension and the VK_EXTERNAL_SEMAPHORE_HANDLE_TYPE_SYNC_FD_BIT andVK_EXTERNAL_FENCE_HANDLE_TYPE_SYNC_FD_BIT Vulkan external handle types when the nvidia-drm kernel module is loaded with the modeset=1 parameter.
• Added experimental support for framebuffer consoles provided bynvidia-drm. On kernels that implement drm_fbdev_generic_setup anddrm_aperture_remove_conflicting_pci_framebuffers, nvidia-drm will install a framebuffer console when loaded with both `modeset=1` and `fbdev=1`kernel module parameters. This will    replace the Linux boot console driven by a system framebuffer driver such as efifb or vesafb.
  
  

Note that when an nvidia-drm framebuffer console is enabled, unloading nvidia-drm will cause the screen to turn off.

• Updated nvidia-installer to allow installing the driver while an existing NVIDIA driver is already loaded.
• Added support for virtual reality displays, such as the SteamVR platform, on Wayland compositors that support DRM leasing. Support requires xwayland version 22.1.0 and wayland-protocols version 1.22, or later.  Tested on sway, minimum version 1.7 with wlroots version 0.15, and also on Kwin, minimum version 5.24.
  
  

Note: Before xwayland 23.2, there is a known issue with HDMI displays where the headset will fail to start a second time after closing SteamVR.  This can be worked around by unplugging and replugging in the headset.

• Fixed a bug that prevented VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) from working with Wayland.
• Changed the name visible in /proc/devices of NVIDIA devices and the NVIDIA control device from "nvidia-frontend" to "nvidia" and "nvidiactl". Scripts which parse /proc/devices (such as udev rules) may need to be updated. Note that the conventional /dev device paths like /dev/nvidia0and /dev/nvidiactl remain unchanged.
• Added support to the NVIDIA VDPAU driver for running in Xwayland. Please refer to the "Xwayland support in VDPAU" section of the README for further details.
• Added libnvidia-gpucomp.so to the driver package.  This is a helper library used for GPU shader compilation.
• Removed libnvidia-vulkan-producer.so from the driver package. This helper library is no longer needed by the Wayland WSI.

Linux x64 (AMD64/EM64T) Display Driver | 550.54.14 | Linux 64-bit | NVIDIA