For NVIDIA users, the new 580.65.06 Beta driver was released few days ago for Linux users.

The new driver fixed various bugs, and introduced some new features for better Wayland and VR performance.

First, it added the fifo-v1 Wayland protocol support for apps/games using Vulkan. It’s a protocol introduces first in first out surface content update behavior, allowing to ensure the content updates are applied in the correct order, reducing visual inconsistencies and potential stuttering.

The driver also implemented a feature to reduce time spent in the interrupt top half for low latency display interrupts by deferring the work until later. This feature is experimental and disabled by default. User may load nvidia.ko with NVreg_RegistryDwords=RmEnableAggressiveVblank=1 kernel parameter to enable it.

With the equivalent functionality on Windows, the driver updated GPU clock value reporting in nvidia-settings, NVML, and nvidia-smi to show clocks before thermal and idle slowdowns.

To help reduce stutter especially when using virtual reality, the driver now by default enable RMIntrLockingMode feature which was originally introduced in the r570 series. And, user has the choice to disable it by loading nvidia.ko with NVreg_RegistryDwords=RMIntrLockingMode=0 kernel parameter.

Image by Ricarda Mölck from Pixabay

Others are mostly bug-fixes for following issues:

• llama.cpp crash on exit when using Vulkan as backend.
• GTK 4 app crash when using Vulkan backend on Wayland.
• Bigscreen Beyond Head Mounted Displays compatibility.
• Potential black screen when setting specific modes on HDMI displays.
• Blank or frozen screens on Maxwell or Pascal series GPU with multiple displays in different resolution, when nvidia-drm is loaded with modeset=1 and fbdev=1 kernel parameters.
• Suspend issue when system memory is running low.
• Blank screen on some single-buffered GLX applications running on XWayland.
• Kernel “use-after-free” error on pre-Turing GPUs.
• OpenGL apps stall when using NVIDIA as a PRIME Display Offload sink.
• Increased memory usage in X11 OpenGL and Vulkan apps after suspend and resume.
• 32-bit app crash when running on recent builds of glibc.

Get NVIDIA 580.65.06

The official release note as well as the .run installer are available at the link below:

However, it’s NEVER recommended to install the .run package provide by NVIDIA! It’s complicated for beginners to install the package, and easy to run into issues and even break your system!

For Ubuntu, it’s better to wait the official package (check this page to see if it’s ready), or use the popular “Graphics Drivers” team PPA (also not ready for the driver at the moment of writing).

If you can’t wait, then try this stable PPA maintained by Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu) Kernel Team.

NOTE: I don’t see any description about the PPA, though it’s maintained by Ubuntu developers. Use it at your own risk!

To add the PPA and install NVIDIA 580, first open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run commands below one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:canonical-kernel-team/nvidia-graphics

sudo apt update

Then, either launch “Additional Drivers” or follow the official guide to install the driver.

Tips: In my case I need to remove the previously installed nvidia-575 driver before being able to install the new one in my old laptop.