Good news, Just compiled nVidia 331.20 on kernel 3.12, and it actually worked.
Everything seems to behave normally so far.
After some 6 months, modern linux kernel users aren't constrained to nouveau graphics anymore, about time.
Can't say "good work nVidia", because it's not, but at least they've got a functional driver again.
Oh and the proprietary lib support for streaming is included, it's locked down to "certified partners", but it means that they want their Shield streaming function to work with SteamOS no doubt. Good news for all those reviewers that have a Shield. I don't know if it changes anything for consumers, because I don't think there are many users that have actually bought a Shield, it's a bit of a reviewer-only piece of hardware, haha, but at least good for them that they'll have an actually usable controller when they get a Steam Machine to review later on, and don't have to use the Steam controller.
Oh and it's only available on the US nVidia site, and get this: IT'S NOT MARKED AS BETA: nVidia has actually brought out a driver for linux that's not marked as beta... oh boy, this is big!
General info for less experienced people that might want to switch to the new driver but don't know how without repo packages (and those aren't available yet that I know of). I thought it might be useful info because new linux users might not know the "old ways":
Make sure your system and selinux policies (if you use SELinux) are updated.
You need gcc and kernel-devel installed, for the nvidia kernel modules to compile. There was probably an update on gcc today, so make sure you have the latest version!
First uninstall nouveau (and blacklist it in modprobe), and very important: uninstall older nvidia binaries and their kernel modules, so in short, all kmod-nvidia or akmod-nvidia or dkms-nvidia if there is such a thing, has to be gone. rename initramfs and re-dracut it with the driverless system. Then reboot, edit the command list, add runlevel 3, do not start x, and run the nvidia install script. Accept to supplementary install the 32-bit libs during install, because you'll need them for games (the installer will ask if you want to do this).
It's a quick process, the longest step is probably the dracut of initramfs, because of the compression that might take a couple of seconds depending on your system.
Well yesterday evening I did a short test with some OpenGL games, I get about +10 fps in Minetest and about +5 fps in Xonotic (that's with all maxed out, didn't try different settings). So definitely a step in the right direction. After 3/4 day everything still works. In terms of OpenCL performance, it's still the same: nothing to write home about, I don't think they've added anything, the list of OpenCL calls that are supported is still very short, pretty much CUDA-equivalent like always.
I hear you that 325 works on your system, it did on my systems too, thanks to RH patches for the kernel modules, but the whole thing had some major issues with VMWare and even Virtualbox headers, that just forced the whole system into survival mode basically, and killed performance. That is not the case anymore, it seems to compile and run just fine now with other proprietary kernel modules, and I didn't even get SELinux alerts.
Just found out that the new nVidia driver doesn't work with kernel 3.11.7... yeah... so all nVidia did was to include the third party patches for already released stable and testing kernels in their driver... pfff... whatever nVidia... so the endless patch hunt for modern distro users is just going to continue... that was short lived happiness...
Keep us posted on your experiences with the new driver/kernel Zoltan.
It's always baby steps with Nvidia, since they have so much to get right. Although with Valve pushing their OS I guess we'll see more frequent development.
I am looking forward to the upgrade, especially after reading the changelog, except I don't have a testing machine in the wild ATM.
Update on the nVidia 331 driver on linux: one advice: stay away from it. Not only is it a bitch to get to work with just about any kernel, but also, the driver seriously sucks. I got it to work on sunday with kernel 3.11.7, but the driver is seriously not worth even calling it a graphics driver, it causes X crashes, it has a huge amount of artefacts, gaming performance is pretty bad, I don't know what nVidia did, but as this driver took almost a year to produce, and it's even crappier than the last one, things don't look good at all. So nVidia is definitely screwing linux users over.
Reverted back to RPMFusion's version of the 325 driver and to nouveau, because I simply don't want to deal with the worst code I've not actually seen but had on my computer since I gave up Windows in 1996. And I know I'm not the only one, because a week down the line, and notwithstanding the cooperation between RedHat and nVidia, there still isn't a working patch for the 331 driver. That means the shit in nVidia's front yard has piled up so high that you need wings to stay above it.
I'm so never buying anything from nVidia again, their crap only looks good on paper and in advertisements, in real life, it's more trouble than anything else. If they can't make a driver update that actually works in more than a year of debugging, what can they do, if anything. Until beginning of this year, I still actually believed in nVidia, now I know that they're hot air salesmen that don't stand by their products. I hope now that nVidia gets a good ass whooping by AMD and Intel, and that AMD in particular may be inspired by this great lyrical passage of the Flemish Anthem: "Hij scheurt, vernielt, verplettert, bedekt met bloed en slijk, en zegepralend grijnst hij op 's vijands trillend lijk", which anyone may translate at his/her own risk of losing interest in looking at cute kitten videos.
Perhaps mantle will help AMD in this end? Would mantle be more friendly or as closed as DirectX requiring a compatibility layer. I guess I will hold off a new build till these waters settle a bit more.