I packaged for myself 396.24 and it works perfectly.

I did it because it fixes some graphical bugs in War Thunder simulation game.

It would be nice to have this version in the official solus repo.

@Devil505 the main problem is not updating but more nvidia drops support on older GPUs and it seems the maintainers don't wanna have yet another nvidia driver pkg :)

In T6580#118896, @Girtablulu wrote:

.... and it seems the maintainers don't wanna have yet another nvidia driver pkg :)

Why not ?
Sure I get it, there is more work involved, but to be fair they are claiming to be an desktoporiented OS. Gaming is today a HUGE niche of the pc/linux desktop userbase.

There are thoose that doesn't care at all just want it to work and to be stable...nouveau or nvidia 304 drivers or are perfect for them.
Then there are thoose who need a little better supportet hardware and performance for tasks that require more than just the basic driver...390 is for them.
But then there are thoose of us that want more out of the system..recent drivers, kernels and support, without necessarily having the "bleeding edge" software.
In that case it would be very useful for us to have an option from newer/later driverstacks.

As Devil said, you can easily compile it yourself and until now it wasn't need to be updated to the latest driver, and solus is rolling not bleeding edge stuff will get updated but not by braking other users systems. I bothered them about it already and they will come up with a solution

In T6580#118904, @Girtablulu wrote:

As Devil said, you can easily compile it yourself and until now it wasn't need to be updated to the latest driver, and solus is rolling not bleeding edge stuff will get updated but not by braking other users systems. I bothered them about it already and they will come up with a solution

I really don't get what it is you arguing/argumenting about here ?
Isn't the whole idea about the package requests feature for the users to request packages and if enough requests are made for a package the devs will see it as something important to the users and likely put at least some priority in making it happen ?

I know that the devs won't put up a package that will will break our systems, no one here is asking them to either.
I know Solus is not bleeding edge, I get and appreciate that. But it doesn't need to be ancient either.
Isn't that the whole idea of development, to move forward and develop and try new stuff.

I'm not complaining abot the devs or there work. I love Solus and I'm backing the OS and devs in more than one way.
I just need a newer gfx driver to fixe some issues I have..that's all.

I've talked to a couple of the triage team members in IRC regarding this a week or two ago.

Apparently the short-lived branch of Nvidia drivers cause a lot more issues than they fix and can't really be included at the moment because kernel-level modules are manually rebuilt whenever there's a kernel upgrade. The way it was phrased made it sound like it's a possible package once automatic rebuilds are a thing, but before that Linux-Driver-Management (LDM), the new software centre and a way to automatically rebuild packages is necessary.

Feel free to correct anything I mis-remember.

(We don't have DKMS so drivers must be rebuilt somehow on kernel upgrades. DKMS systems would automatically do this post-kernel-upgrade, but it's prone to breaking.
Solus currently has all kernel-level modules like vboxdrv (part of Virtualbox) and Nvidia drivers manually rebuilt by triage-team members when the kernel is updated.)

In T6580#118905, @mrazster wrote:

I know that the devs won't put up a package that will will break our systems, no one here is asking them to either.

Updating the branch to 396 without changing how updates are done will will lead to black screens on systems that the 396 drivers no longer support, even if an extra 390 package is added.

Note - There are some things that won't work on the long-lived branch of Nvidia drivers. (390.x)

Rise of the Tomb Raider, for example, won't run at all on Solus since the short-lived branch of Nvidia drivers isn't supported.

The new blur effects in KDE Plasma Desktop 5.13 also apparently don't work on (390.x) and require 396.x+ to work.

! In T6580#118912, @sunnyflunk wrote:
Updating the branch to 396 without changing how updates are done will will lead to black screens on systems that the 396 drivers no longer support, even if an extra 390 package is added.

OK..thnx a lot for that clarification, much appreciated !
And I can absolutely understand why a "fix" (for lack of better words) for the problem described above isn't a high priority at the moment.

Would it be safe to assume that there won't be any other nvidiadrivers from other than the 390 branch in the repository, in the near future ?

In T6580#118917, @mrazster wrote:

Would it be safe to assume that there won't be any other nvidiadrivers from other than the 390 branch in the repository, in the near future ?

We have 4 different nvidia drivers for varying levels of compatibility:

1. nouveau for old cards or cards too new for the highest driver (except for the 970, poor bastard)
2. The 304 long-lived branch
3. The 340 long-lived branch (8600GT or newer)
4. The 390 long-lived branch (400 series or newer)

I'd rather not add another driver until the next long-lived branch is introduced. That will most assuredly meet the new needs for DXVK and company. At that time though, we will most likely retire the 304 long-lived branch to keep the list shorter. In the meantime, Nvidia is still backporting features just at a slower rate than you might like. You are of course welcome to clone our nvidia-glx-driver package and get it working with the short-lived branch, but we have already rolled back from 396 once, and I would prefer to not repeat that since it legitimately forced people to rollback from command line.

Also, while I get the frustration over Tomb Raider that's just the way of it. Nvidia was late to the Vulkan party in general and they haven't been very forthcoming in helping the Mesa devs get Nouveau up to snuff either.

In T6580#118919, @DataDrake wrote:

We have 4 different nvidia drivers for varying levels of compatibility:

1. nouveau for old cards or cards too new for the highest driver (except for the 970, poor bastard)
2. The 304 long-lived branch
3. The 340 long-lived branch (8600GT or newer)
4. The 390 long-lived branch (400 series or newer)

I'd rather not add another driver until the next long-lived branch is introduced. That will most assuredly meet the new needs for DXVK and company. At that time though, we will most likely retire the 304 long-lived branch to keep the list shorter. In the meantime, Nvidia is still backporting features just at a slower rate than you might like. You are of course welcome to clone our nvidia-glx-driver package and get it working with the short-lived branch, but we have already rolled back from 396 once, and I would prefer to not repeat that since it legitimately forced people to rollback from command line.
Also, while I get the frustration over Tomb Raider that's just the way of it. Nvidia was late to the Vulkan party in general and they haven't been very forthcoming in helping the Mesa devs get Nouveau up to snuff either.

Very helpful and informative...much appreciated, thanks ! :-)

Tombraider is not by far the only reason(even if it's an important one for me). I've got issues with other games to that the 396.24 fixes. I also got som odd behaviour with current 390 drivers when overclocking my gfxcard that 396 fixes.

I'll just have to find a way to handle it during kernelupdates and what not.

i am all for latest driver packages, just add them in the repo with the tag "experimental" and if there is any problems you can say: we told you so. Let me choose to be the idiot, dont try to protect me.

also, games dude, i want to play them on Solus, make it happen. Nvidia sucks but i cant buy another card so i am stuck with it for a while.