That’s what the OP asked: kernel and nvidia driver packages.
By what I know it’s not. GeForce GTX 850M architecture is Kepler according to this:
https: // en. wikipedia .org /wiki/GeForce_800M_series
(ugh had to add spaces again)
I do have a bitter ugly experience with my older PC with a Nvidia Geforce 9500. When Nvidia dropped support for it, the update killed it. Borked system booted to black screen nothing else, that’s what I remember.
I had to backup the data and reinstall Manjaro. Oh and installing with the Nvidia drivers was also useless. It was only possible to reinstall using the Open Source (Nouveau) drivers.
Yes, Thank you.
The thing is, my older PC is at least 15 years old and it still works (barely, the hardware is starting to have issues) but it does work thanks to the Nouveau drivers, I expect to get at least some other 5 years from my laptop, but things like these would make it painful as hell!
This painful thought just crossed my mind! What if my HDD fails? Perhaps not even freezing the kernel and Nvidia driver packages would save me! I would have to install Manjaro again, but (just the problem I had with my older PC) I would be completely unable to install a newer version because it would simply not work! Updating would also become impossible! Or perhaps… I will have to keep around older versions of Manjaro just to be safe…
Nope. GTX850M have GM107 code name - that’s Maxwell microarchitecture. I know because I have same card in my laptop and I’ve made some research when I heard about it.
You can’t fight planned obsolescence, no matter what OS you’re using. The only options you have are maybe hoping these abandoned GPUs get added to the nvidia legacy drivers or simply use the old driver version that still supported your GPU, or as you mentioend before, use nouveau.
That is, besides just getting a new PC, preferably one with an AMD gpu instead now that you know just how shitty nvidia actually are.
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Sooner or later, Windows (and Mac) are going to be obsolete, so NVIDIA probably has some strings attached to them, and if I had to take a wild guess, the only people who need NVIDIA are those who own one of their products by accident, or they are a gamer who is looking for the processing power advertised by NVIDIA.
All this is really bad for the right to repair!
If this laptop’s HDD ever fails, I could just replace it and reinstall the OS and everything should work even if it’s quite ancient! But that’s not the case!
Nvidia is making Linux users a disservice by giving closed source drivers instead of open source. It’s like pretending to help while making sure they can backstab us whenever they need.
Now I am having a more technical problem, I have opened a thread here
Nvidia can do what every they want with their hardware. Especially if Wayland is standard, most of the old hardware won’t work anyway. So use Nouveau if that works for you.
Thank you but it doesn’t work. Yeah, they are a company that can do anything as they wish. But is it OK to go against older hardware users’ right to repair? I don’t think so.
So, I guess even if using free software we are not truly free to own what we paid for!
Linux games need the GPU as well. Anyways Linux was supposed to allow the usage of much older hardware, that’s what it was capable of, but now it can’t, Nouveau Open Source driver is playing catchup and right now it simply can’t use the capabilities of the GPU. It’s useles. What if I wanted to use Blender to render some 3D stuff? That would also require the GPU.
This is almost as if all the hard work I did to buy this laptop was in vain! All effort I took to be free and install Linux distros (now that my Mint is going End of Life support) seems in vain as well! I feel desperate and cornered!
Well, Manjaro is more on the bleeding edge, and we drop Nvidia drivers when they are not compiling against the latest kernels. So even if there were some drivers we have to support all kernels on our end. So maybe the good old Debian might help you out: https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers
Thanks for your reply. Well… I must say I have tried installing Debian in my older PC, and it works but it lacks some capabilities. Manjaro does work even in that ancient PC (Much older Nvidia 9500 GT was saved by the Nouveau Open Source drivers, as the Nvidia closed source ones killed the machine with the last update)
However the same can’t be said for my laptop which is not that old, but still, clearly Nvidia killed support before, will kill it for “Kepler” hardware architecture and regardless of whether my 850M GPU is Kepler or not, their path is set, they will eventually come for it. But Nouveau which came to the rescue with the older card, doesn’t seem to be able to do it this time!
Well, one reason why Intel and AMD do their driver updates within the Kernel. Nvidia is known for Blender and Crypto, but as soon as they won’t support a new Xorg-Server or Wayland as a user you can’t do much. Let’s see when my NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 bites the dust …
And also, as I explained, there is still currently solutions to keep the latest compatible driver in Manjaro, even if Manjaro change the current driver to one not compatible.
Nvidia dropping support for older hardware in newer driver doesn’t mean that suddenly your hardware is good for the trash can… There are possibilities to manage the driver yourself, or with the help of the AUR.
Again, you could keep an old driver, even if not supported by Manjaro, and even if Nvidia stop supporting your card in their latest drivers. The support is still in a driver.
The only issue would be the kernel/driver compatibility, but again, smart people will figure it out (and anyway, you could keep an older LTS kernel compatible with the driver).
Thanks for your reply. You see, I can’t make Manjaro work with my hardware and I am having problems right now.
I hope you’re right and someone who knows how to do things will help me make it work, because I am still unable to. I just can’t use my laptop in this state as advanced GPU usage won’t work.
I’m planing to dumb Nvidia as soon as I can.
I ain’t got a problem switching drivers and such as long as I can skip all the irritating problems I face BECAUSE Nvidia is messing with everything.
Intel graphics are looking sweeter these days (Xe, Alchemist, Arc) and I think for my next purchase I’ll just avoid Nvidia. Radeon too. Call me old fashioned, but as far as I’m concerned, Intel across the board (no pun intended) is one approach for nipping Linux problems in the bud, and not just GPU problems. (Disclosure: I’m not invested in Intel but I do want them to compete better.)
I can’t speak for the others, but my Intel Iris Xe can’t even hold a candle versus a cheap Nvidia card. 
It’s great for desktop usage and effects/compositing, and watching high-def videos, etc, but for gaming? holding large amounts of graphics data? hardware encoding? Even lower-end Nvidia cards crush it.
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That’s what I’m getting at – our motivations. I don’t dispute Nvidia leading in performance. It’s just that for those of us who aren’t gamers or crypto miners I don’t think Nvidia benefits are all that substantial taking into account the hoops people jump through making it work in Linux. I thought differently at first but after my first year with my first Optimus laptop I’m surprised at how well the Intel iGPU gets the job done with photo and video editing. I still go with discrete Nvidia most times mainly because it would be a shame to waste all that video RAM.
Ever since I started working with Linux all I’ve ever wanted is to dump Nvidia 
as soon as I can I’ll burn Nvidia and change it to something from AMD. Nvidia has only given me trouble.
So far with two different Nvidia cards in the past years, I had no issues at all. Both cards were supported by the latest driver provided in Manjaro though.
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