New Nvidia Driver Offers Wayland Support
Graphics vendor embraces new reality in Linux graphics
Graphics hardware vendor Nvidia has taken a major step to keep pace with the evolving world of Linux with the announcement that the Nvidia 364.12 Linux driver will support the new-age open source graphics systems Wayland and Mir. Wayland, which began as a community project, and Canonical's Mir are modern-day alternatives to the X Window System that has traditionally run on most Linux computers. Wayland, in particular, has taken on much momentum in the past two years, and many believe we are already reaching a situation in which support for Wayland is a necessary condition for supporting Linux. Mir still in development with Canonical and will eventually be the on-board graphics system for Ubuntu.
The 364.12 driver adds a Wayland platform library, as well as EGL extensions and other components. The new driver will also support the Vulkan 1.0 open standard graphics API.
Nvidia has come under fire in the past for not investing in Linux support and was even the subject of a much-publicized middle-finger salute from Linus Torvalds at a Q&A session in Finland in 2012. Since Linus's epic rant, the company has made significant efforts to improve Linux support. The new Wayland and Mir enhancements will help to make Nvidia a viable option for Linux gamers and power users.
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
-
New Version of Flatpak Released
Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.
-
IBM Announces Powerhouse Linux Server
IBM has unleashed a seriously powerful Linux server with the LinuxONE Emperor 5.
-
Plasma Ends LTS Releases
The KDE Plasma development team is doing away with the LTS releases for a good reason.
-
Arch Linux Available for Windows Subsystem for Linux
If you've ever wanted to use a rolling release distribution with WSL, now's your chance.
-
System76 Releases COSMIC Alpha 7
With scores of bug fixes and a really cool workspaces feature, COSMIC is looking to soon migrate from alpha to beta.
-
OpenMandriva Lx 6.0 Available for Installation
The latest release of OpenMandriva has arrived with a new kernel, an updated Plasma desktop, and a server edition.
-
TrueNAS 25.04 Arrives with Thousands of Changes
One of the most popular Linux-based NAS solutions has rolled out the latest edition, based on Ubuntu 25.04.
-
Fedora 42 Available with Two New Spins
The latest release from the Fedora Project includes the usual updates, a new kernel, an official KDE Plasma spin, and a new System76 spin.