Legacy NVIDIA xf86-video-nv Driver Sees First Release In Years
The legacy xf86-video-nv driver for user-space mode-setting on old NVIDIA GPUs is out with a rather rare release and the first in over two years with a collection of different bug fixes.
It was more than a decade and a half ago when NVIDIA announced they would be dropping support for the xf86-video-nv driver with their GeForce 400/500 "Fermi" generation. Even before that, the xf86-video-nv driver was only really designed for being "good enough" to booting to the X.Org Server enough that you can go to the NVIDIA website and download their official NVIDIA Linux graphics driver.
NVIDIA dropped the xf86-video-nv driver since kernel mode-setting was taking off, X.Org Server needs growing more complex, and also their GPUs becoming more complex too. Plus it was also around that time the open-source, independent Nouveau driver became more functional too. Nouveau especially in more recent years is a better choice than xf86-video-nv for then also having 3D, kernel mode-setting, and many more features than the very basic NV DDX.
So since around 2010, the xf86-video-nv driver hasn't been too useful or needed unless just caring about user-space mode-setting on really old NVIDIA GPUs. But with once-in-a-while X.Org maintenance releases, it's still seeing a rare release in 2026. Oracle engineer Alan Coopersmith who has served as the longtime X.Org release wrangler issued xf86-video-nv 2.1.24 on Saturday.
This updated X.Org legacy driver has a few maintenance fixes, improved man page formatting, a few compiler fixes, adding support for the GeForce GT 320M, and other random small fixes. If you are specifically after this NVIDIA UMS X.Org driver for pre-Fermi GPUs for some reason, you can find the new legacy DDX on the X.Org mailing list.
As part of his release wrangling, Alan Coopersmith also released font-util 1.4.2, xbitmaps 1.1.4, xrandr 1.5.4, and libXpm 3.5.19 with various small fixes. With XRandR is moving from Autoconf to Meson as well as warning now when running under XWayland.
It was more than a decade and a half ago when NVIDIA announced they would be dropping support for the xf86-video-nv driver with their GeForce 400/500 "Fermi" generation. Even before that, the xf86-video-nv driver was only really designed for being "good enough" to booting to the X.Org Server enough that you can go to the NVIDIA website and download their official NVIDIA Linux graphics driver.
NVIDIA dropped the xf86-video-nv driver since kernel mode-setting was taking off, X.Org Server needs growing more complex, and also their GPUs becoming more complex too. Plus it was also around that time the open-source, independent Nouveau driver became more functional too. Nouveau especially in more recent years is a better choice than xf86-video-nv for then also having 3D, kernel mode-setting, and many more features than the very basic NV DDX.
So since around 2010, the xf86-video-nv driver hasn't been too useful or needed unless just caring about user-space mode-setting on really old NVIDIA GPUs. But with once-in-a-while X.Org maintenance releases, it's still seeing a rare release in 2026. Oracle engineer Alan Coopersmith who has served as the longtime X.Org release wrangler issued xf86-video-nv 2.1.24 on Saturday.
This updated X.Org legacy driver has a few maintenance fixes, improved man page formatting, a few compiler fixes, adding support for the GeForce GT 320M, and other random small fixes. If you are specifically after this NVIDIA UMS X.Org driver for pre-Fermi GPUs for some reason, you can find the new legacy DDX on the X.Org mailing list.
As part of his release wrangling, Alan Coopersmith also released font-util 1.4.2, xbitmaps 1.1.4, xrandr 1.5.4, and libXpm 3.5.19 with various small fixes. With XRandR is moving from Autoconf to Meson as well as warning now when running under XWayland.