{"id":418302,"date":"2026-04-26T11:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T11:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/418302\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T11:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T11:14:10","slug":"legacy-nvidia-xf86-video-nv-driver-sees-first-release-in-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/418302\/","title":{"rendered":"Legacy NVIDIA xf86-video-nv Driver Sees First Release In Years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"NVIDIA\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/nvidia.webp.webp\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\"\/><br \/>\nThe 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.<\/p>\n<p>It was more than a decade and a half ago when NVIDIA announced they would be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.phoronix.com\/review\/nvidia_kills_nv\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">dropping support for the xf86-video-nv driver<\/a> with their GeForce 400\/500 &#8220;Fermi&#8221; generation. Even before that, the xf86-video-nv driver was only really designed for being &#8220;good enough&#8221; to booting to the X.Org Server enough that you can go to the NVIDIA website and download their official NVIDIA Linux graphics driver.&#13;\n<\/p>\n<p>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.&#13;<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1777202050_301_image.webp\" alt=\"old NVIDIA GPUs\"\/><\/p>\n<p>So since around 2010, the xf86-video-nv driver hasn&#8217;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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1777202050_679_image.webp\" alt=\"pre-Fermi 9800 GTX\"\/><\/p>\n<p>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 <a href=\"https:\/\/lists.x.org\/archives\/xorg\/2026-April\/062231.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the X.Org mailing list<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As part of his release wrangling, Alan Coopersmith also released <a href=\"https:\/\/lists.x.org\/archives\/xorg\/2026-April\/062232.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">font-util 1.4.2<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/lists.x.org\/archives\/xorg\/2026-April\/062230.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">xbitmaps 1.1.4<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/lists.x.org\/archives\/xorg\/2026-April\/062229.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">xrandr 1.5.4<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/lists.x.org\/archives\/xorg\/2026-April\/062228.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">libXpm 3.5.19<\/a> with various small fixes. With XRandR is moving from Autoconf to Meson as well as warning now when running under XWayland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The legacy xf86-video-nv driver for user-space mode-setting on old NVIDIA GPUs is out with a rather rare release&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7165,61,60,7164,7162,7161,7168,7166,7163,7167,7160,7171,80,7169,7170],"class_list":{"0":"post-418302","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-desktop-linux","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-linux-benchmarking","12":"tag-linux-hardware-benchmarks","13":"tag-linux-hardware-reviews","14":"tag-linux-how-to","15":"tag-linux-performance","16":"tag-linux-server-benchmarks","17":"tag-open-source-graphics","18":"tag-phoronix","19":"tag-phoronix-test-suite","20":"tag-technology","21":"tag-ubuntu-benchmarks","22":"tag-ubuntu-hardware"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}