NVIDIA 590, the next new feature branch driver for Linux, is available for beta testing.
This beta driver is NVIDIA 590.44.01, which however does not introduce any new features, but raised the minimum system library requirements and fixed some bugs.
The new driver now requires wayland >= 1.20 for the modern Wayland session, xserver 1.17 or higher for classic Xorg session, and glibc library >= 2.27. For Ubuntu, 22.04 and higher match the Wayland requirement, while 18.04 and 20.04 with Xorg are still supported.
Besides the minimum requirements update, the release also improved the performance of recreating Vulkan swap chains. The swap chain is essentially a queue of images waiting to be presented to the screen. By improving the performance of swap chains recreation, it can help prevent stuttering when resizing Vulkan application windows.
Others are mostly bug-fixes. They include:
- Fix that “PowerMizer” preferred mode drop-down menu in the nvidia-settings control panel didn’t not function correctly on Wayland.
- Fix that the Dots Per Inch (DPI) to be incorrectly reported for some monitors, such as Samsung Odyssey Neo G9.
- Fix Vulkan applications not working in VMs using Venus VirtIO virtual GPU.
- Fix system freezes on PREEMPT_RT real-time kernels
For more about NVIDIA 590.44.01 as well as the official .run installers for x86_64 processors, see this nvidia webpage. Or, go to this page for aarch64 processor, FreeBSD, and Solaris.
How to Install NVIDIA 590.44.01 in Ubuntu
If nothing goes wrong, Ubuntu will add the official NVIDIA 590 driver package for next Ubuntu 26.04, and perhaps backport it for current Ubuntu 25.10 and 24.04/22.04 LTS releases. Though, the process can take few months. Keep an eye on this page for the official NVIDIA 590 package by Ubuntu.
For choice, you may add the long standing Graphics Driver Team PPA, which usually adds the new driver package earlier that the official package mentioned above.
For those who can’t wait, the Ubuntu developer Jacob Martin has made NVIDIA 590.44.01 into this personal PPA for Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04, and Ubuntu 25.10 for testing purpose!
NOTE: the PPA package is for testing only purpose. Don’t try it on production machine!!! It breaks my wi-fi in my case when trying to restore NVIDIA 580.
To add the PPA, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jacobmartin/nv-graphics-2
Then, try launching “Additional Drivers” utility to install the driver. Or run the command below instead in terminal:
sudo apt install nvidia-driver-590
When done, reboot computer.
If the driver does not work properly for you, then try running the command below to uninstall:
sudo apt remove --autoremove nvidia-driver-590
