Bug Fixing NVIDIA 304.51 Drivers For Linux Released

It might have taken a bit longer than expected, but NVIDIA has this week issued a brand-new Linux driver that not only supports the company's latest graphics cards, but brings a ton of bug fixes along with it. If you're planning to pick up a GeForce GTX 660 or 650, this is the driver you need. On the mobile side, support for the GT 645M, GTX 670MX and GTX 675MX has also been added.

Among the long line-up of bug fixes, none stand out as being overdue (as in, I don't recall seeing mention of a particular problem en masse), but this is a nice fine-tuning of things. There has been a couple of X.org fixes, however, such as a crash that could have occured when the X server was compiled without DRI2 support. OpenGL animations under older X servers has also been fixed, and in a similar vein, performance issues affecting core X11 rendering has also been tackled.

The full update list is as follows:

• Added support for the following GPUs:
• GeForce GTX 660
• GeForce GTX 650
• GeForce GT 645M
• GeForce GTX 670MX
• GeForce GTX 675MX
• Added support for the new Quadro Sync board for Quadro Kepler GPUs. See the "Configuring Frame Lock and Genlock" chapter in the README for details.
• Fixed an X server crash on X.Org xserver 1.13 when it is compiled without support for DRI2.
• Fixed a regression that broke color controls on older X servers.
• Fixed a bug that sometimes caused the display layout area of the nvidia-settings control panel to be laid out incorrectly.
• Fixed a bug that prevented panning from working correctly after a modeswitch on some X servers with support for cursor constraining.
• Gamma ramp and colormap adjustments now apply correctly when screen transformations such as rotation and keystone correction are in use.
• Fixed RandR per-CRTC gamma persistence across modeswitches and VT-switches.
• Fixed a bug that caused the X server to sometimes hang in response to input events.
• Fixed a reduction in rendering performance for core X11 rendering on certain GPUs that occurred in the 290.series of releases.
• Fixed a bug that prevented PowerMizer from working correctly on some boards with GDDR5 memory, such as some GeForce GT 240 SKUs.
• Fixed a bug that caused OpenGL applications to not animate properly when a rotation or a transformation was applied on some older X server versions.
• Enabled FXAA with Unified Back Buffers.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the "Reset Hardware Defaults" button in the Display Settings page of nvidia-settings from being activated.

You can hit up the URL below to read more on the latest driver and peruse the install directions, or if you're already well-versed when it comes to installing NVIDIA drivers under Linux, you can skip right on over to NVIDIA's FTP server.