Dropping all legacy and older Nvidia drivers ?!?

It becomes harder and harder to support the older and legacy Nvidia drivers for upcoming kernel series. Starting with 5.9 kernel series, only 450 and 455 are supported by this kernel. Older drivers simply don’t compile anymore. Out of the two, only 455 supports CUDA. If we look at Arch, they already dropped the legacy drivers completely.

We would go back to a rolling driver update, and only offer the latest Nvidia driver. This might bring back the known issues, that some graphic cards won’t be supported anymore or a new driver might bring in regressions.

Nvidia is a topic, so what does our community think of it?

    • Yay, rolling drivers is a must!
    • I need older drivers, so my hardware works
    • I’ll switch to Nouveau or a different manufacturer when older drivers get dropped

0 voters

9 Likes

Could we not just keep the lts kernels supported with the older/legacy drivers? It’s only a matter of time before more and more cards are no longer supported by nvidia updates unfortunately

22 Likes

You might add a 4th option: “Ill switch distro to keep my system working”
Ofcourse this is not a topic that is caused by Arch/Manjaro, but it is what a normal user will do because it is cheaper from the pov of the end-user…

15 Likes

It’s a lose-lose situation.

I will toss my GTX 660 soon anyway. Some of the users won’t have the luxury of switching to Nouveau or different manufacturer :neutral_face: Especially laptop users.

Supporting older drivers will require resources which could be spent everywhere else - literally everywhere else. Going with rolling drivers could work if there are enough users keeping the problems localised in the testing or unstable channels. Either way, there will be unhappy users.

My suggestion would be to keep the poll open for more than a couple of weeks before making a decision. Maybe reach to Phoronix, GamingOnLinux or any other Linux outlet that is willing besides Manjaro’s own public channels.

13 Likes

no possibility for long term Nvidia 390 series ?
for any laptop it will be very difficult for older hybrid nvidia video cards

1 Like

My hybrid card use 390 series

Thank you a lot, I’m all in for having a rolling nvidia driver again :slight_smile:
as for the reasons one can read my thread here:

Since driver versions 418 - 455 all support the same gpus (455 supports new ones ofc but didn’t drop support for older ones) it is safe to remove all from 418 - 450.

But I would advice keeping at least the 390 legacy driver if possible since this is the last series supporting older gpus which are dropped from 418 on.
If this is too much effort it may be enough to have the 390 series only for LTS kernels.

7 Likes

I think the problem is mainly with NVIDIA in laptops. In most cases, the video card is soldered to the motherboard. With desktops it can be easily changed …
I think it would be best to use open source drivers for all older models. If it is possible to help the development of open source drivers from the community is also a good solution.
NVIDIA’s driver policy is not good and this hinders open source development.
In my opinion, open source drivers should be used for old NVIDIA cards - in most cases they work well, Manjaro should support the new NVIDIA drivers that can be used with the new kernel.
It may be considered to maintain an old LTS kernel to work with the old drivers for a longer period of time.
Everything else would be a great waste of resources.
The transition to this way of working should be slow, for example for 1 years.

6 Likes

was rolling 450
or 435

Unfortunately they don’t work well that’s the problem. Anyone with a gaming laptop can’t use opensource drivers as they just won’t work gaming. Yes I know its nvidia fault but if you drop completely support for older cards then Unfortunately manjaro will probably lose a lot of users which no one wants.

As long as there’s some support for older cards even if its just one driver with an lts kernel then that’s good enough

2 Likes

Nvidia only supports 450 and 455 on linux59. If you look at the driver releases only the current releases get supported by current kernels. Due to GPL condom, which most likely might get backported, it will be anyway hard to keep old legacy drivers working on current kernels. Only Canonical is preparing patches to make them work.

Our approach is: keep it as long as it works and it is secure to use. If you use CUDA you have anyway a current new hardware, if you have however old hardware, soon or later Nouveau is your friend.

5 Likes

First of all, thank you for doing this poll, it’s great that you listen to your users before making important changes and not at all a given.

I only have laptops so switching manufacturers isn’t an option until I’ll buy my next laptop (never again one with an Nvidia card in it) and retire my old one.

Probably a good compromise, if possible, would be to keep the 390 drivers on today’s recommended LTS kernels only.

1 Like

I have a laptop with Nvidia 920M and the suggested drivers are 390 and 418 (with Manjaro) but I have never used both I’m using 455 and if I recall properly CUDA started working with Linux 5.9.2 update.
I have not faced any problem using the newer drivers.
I would suggest that people with older Nvidia GPU should at least try the newer drivers and see how things turn out. As far as I know, all the GPUs supported by 418 are supported by 455 not sure about 390.

1 Like

For 390 we found a way to make it work, however, it will be harder with each new kernel series …

14 Likes

Should have Added “Will use LTS Kernels”. If the Support for the GTX 660 has been dropped or about to be ready to, Then I have to be worried about my GTX 760.

That is the dGPU I built my Rig with. I did upgrade to a Zotac 970 back in Dec '15, but I started have problems with playing games using it. So…

As far as i know GeForce 660 and 760 are supported by Nvidia 455 drivers. I would recommend you to try it out.

Products supporrted by Nvidia 455

**NVIDIA TITAN Series:**

NVIDIA TITAN RTX, NVIDIA TITAN V, NVIDIA TITAN Xp, GeForce GTX TITAN X, GeForce GTX TITAN, GeForce GTX TITAN Black, GeForce GTX TITAN Z

**GeForce RTX 30 Series:**

GeForce RTX 3090, GeForce RTX 3080, GeForce RTX 3070

**GeForce RTX 20 Series (Notebooks):**

GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER, GeForce RTX 2080, GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, GeForce RTX 2070, GeForce RTX 2060

**GeForce RTX 20 Series:**

GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER, GeForce RTX 2080, GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, GeForce RTX 2070, GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER, GeForce RTX 2060

**GeForce MX400 Series (Notebooks):**

GeForce MX450

**GeForce MX300 Series (Notebooks):**

GeForce MX350, GeForce MX330

**GeForce MX200 Series (Notebooks):**

GeForce MX250, GeForce MX230

**GeForce MX100 Series (Notebook):**

GeForce MX150, GeForce MX130, GeForce MX110

**GeForce GTX 16 Series (Notebooks):**

GeForce GTX 1650 Ti

**GeForce 16 Series:**

GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER, GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER, GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, GeForce GTX 1660, GeForce GTX 1650

**GeForce 10 Series:**

GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, GeForce GTX 1080, GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, GeForce GTX 1070, GeForce GTX 1060, GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, GeForce GTX 1050, GeForce GT 1030

**GeForce 10 Series (Notebooks):**

GeForce GTX 1080, GeForce GTX 1070, GeForce GTX 1060, GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, GeForce GTX 1050

**GeForce 900 Series:**

GeForce GTX 980 Ti, GeForce GTX 980, GeForce GTX 970, GeForce GTX 960, GeForce GTX 950

**GeForce 900M Series (Notebooks):**

GeForce GTX 980, GeForce GTX 980M, GeForce GTX 970M, GeForce GTX 965M, GeForce GTX 960M, GeForce GTX 950M, GeForce 945M, GeForce 940MX, GeForce 930MX, GeForce 920MX, GeForce 940M, GeForce 930M

**GeForce 800M Series (Notebooks):**

GeForce GTX 860M, GeForce GTX 850M, GeForce 845M, GeForce 840M, GeForce 830M

**GeForce 700 Series:**

GeForce GTX 780 Ti, GeForce GTX 780, GeForce GTX 770, GeForce GTX 760, GeForce GTX 760 Ti (OEM), GeForce GTX 750 Ti, GeForce GTX 750, GeForce GTX 745, GeForce GT 740, GeForce GT 730, GeForce GT 720, GeForce GT 710

**GeForce 600 Series:**

GeForce GTX 690, GeForce GTX 680, GeForce GTX 670, GeForce GTX 660 Ti, GeForce GTX 660, GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST, GeForce GTX 650 Ti, GeForce GTX 650, GeForce GTX 645, GeForce GT 640, GeForce GT 635, GeForce GT 630

**GeForce 600M Series (Notebooks):**

GeForce GT 640M LE

**Quadro RTX Series:**

Quadro RTX 8000, Quadro RTX 6000, Quadro RTX 5000, Quadro RTX 4000, Quadro RTX 3000

**Quadro RTX Series (Notebooks):**

Quadro RTX 6000

**Quadro Series:**

Quadro GV100, Quadro GP100, Quadro P6000, Quadro P5200, Quadro P5000, Quadro P4000, Quadro P2200, Quadro P2000, Quadro P1000, Quadro P620, Quadro P600, Quadro P400, Quadro M6000 24GB, Quadro M6000, Quadro M5000, Quadro M4000, Quadro M2000, Quadro K6000, Quadro K5200, Quadro K5000, Quadro K4000, Quadro K4200, Quadro K2200, Quadro K2000, Quadro K2000D, Quadro K1200, Quadro K620, Quadro K600, Quadro K420, Quadro 410

**Quadro Series (Notebooks):**

Quadro T2000, Quadro T1000, Quadro P5200, Quadro P5000, Quadro P4200, Quadro P3200, Quadro P4000, Quadro P3000, Quadro P2000, Quadro P1000, Quadro P600, Quadro P520, Quadro P500, Quadro M2200, Quadro M1200, Quadro M620, Quadro M520, Quadro M5500, Quadro M5000M, Quadro M4000M, Quadro M3000M, Quadro M2000M, Quadro M1000M, Quadro M600M, Quadro M500M, Quadro K2200M, Quadro K620M

**Quadro Blade/Embedded Series :**

Quadro P5000, Quadro P3000, Quadro M5000 SE, Quadro M3000 SE

**Quadro NVS Series:**

NVS 810, NVS 510

**GRID Series:**

GRID K520

**NVS Series:**

NVS 810, NVS 510

I’m already using the 455 drivers and the Current Kernel. I was just saying that We don’t know when Nvidia will drop support for those two.

The issue at hand - is not an issue created by Arch, Manjaro nor other distributions.

Yes - distributions will see an decrease in the number of users - but the positive side effect is that distributions will become easier to maintain.

If the previous drivers and kernel support has been circumvented by Nvidia by applying shims claiming to be GPL but in reality is not - then it is Nvidia which has been cheating.

It is like the big Fortune companies which employs an army of lawyers just to make sure they don’t pay taxes. Just think of the cost of all those advisers and then image the pile of money saved to justify the effort and cost of those advisers.

There is nothing fair in this world - only injustice.

13 Likes

My card is hybrid INTEL I915/ NVIDIA GF117M ,so what driver i should be used?

Like everything else in this world, it boils down to a balance between efforts and benefits. Is the effort of keeping some support for these drivers worth the benefits for the users and keeping some users on the distro? If yes go for it as long as it’s technically possible else don’t.

Certainly though the root of this problem isn’t Manjaro or Linux but Nvidia. I for one will make sure I never ever buy anything made by Nvidia again.

8 Likes