NVIDIA 610 (610.43.02) graphics driver is finally made into the proposed repository for testing purpose. If everything goes well, it will be released to the general public soon.
NVIDIA 610 is the latest new feature branch Linux driver, which was released more than a month ago on May 26. It introduced several new Vulkan extensions support, Wayland improvement, and some fixes.
The driver added VK_EXT_shader_long_vector extension support useful for scientific computing, machine learning kernels, and custom data packing, VK_KHR_internally_synchronized_queues extension for safe multiple threads call, VK_NV_push_constant_bank extension allows to specify a memory bank and offset for push constants, as well as VK_KHR_device_group_creation allows to create single logical device from a group of physical GPUs.
It also added FP16 EGL framebuffer configurations on Wayland, DRM format modifiers support for multi-planar YCbCr formats, as well as per-plane DRM color pipeline API that are useful for for high dynamic range (HDR) rendering.
Other changes include support for mmap on DMABUF file descriptors exported from discrete NVIDIA GPUs, allowing CPU to read and write NVIDIA GPU‑allocated shared memory buffers, performance improvements on Starfield and Doom: The Dark Ages video games, and more. See the official release note for details.
Install NVIDIA 610 driver in Ubuntu:
The NVIDIA-provided driver packages for Ubuntu and other Linux distributions were made available when the 610 driver was released. And, I’m written about how to install it in Ubuntu (Option 2).
However, it’s always recommended to use the Ubuntu-provided package. And, it will be available soon. Check the nvidia-610 package status in launchpad page.
After the proposed testing, it will be made available to the general public. At that time, Ubuntu 24.04 and Ubuntu 22.04 user may launch “Additional Drivers” utility to install the 610 driver.
While Ubuntu 26.04 and Ubuntu servers can use ubuntu-drivers command instead to get it:
sudo ubuntu-drivers list --include-dkms
sudo ubuntu-drivers install --include-dkms nvidia:610
NOTE: As non-production branch driver, NVIDIA 610 is made available through multiverse repository. Meaning it’s NOT maintained by Ubuntu core developers, and NOT officially supported by Ubuntu. See this page for details.
