I just want to clarify something. I have a GTX 1060 and happy with it. Nvidia is dropping support for the old cards in future driver updates (>580).
That means I have to stay on the 580 driver, right?
Sorry if this is a stupid question 
According to the Nvidia Driver Searchā¦
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Click on the beta tab and you see 590 driver as well. My older gaming notebook has a gtx 1070
Edit: seems they fixed it.
I am concerned about this too
With a new install coming soon to a Win 10 tower and no intention at the moment of replacing my GTX 1060 unless I really have toā¦
So what will we need to do going forward to avoid breakage and how to transition to legacy drivers after the move to the 590 series?
Sorry for the confusionā¦
EDIT: It looks like we will have to follow the installation guidelines on how to install from the AUR, but Iām still unsure how the transition from the current nvidia driver from the normal Arch repo would go to the upcoming 580 series from the AUR
This is what they say in https://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/590.44.01/README/supportedchips.html about e.g. 10x0 GPUs:
Below are the legacy GPUs that are no longer supported in the unified driver. These GPUs will continue to be maintained through the special legacy NVIDIA GPU driver releases.
The 580.xx driver supports the following set of GPUs:
So 590 series driver do not support them.
10x0 GPUs will have so called āspecial legacyā driver support with the 580 series (whatever that means, I guess no new features and some bug fixes).
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Do we have to block the nvidia packages from updating then or are you not sure what will happen?
Maybe have to install a non rolling distro on my gaming pc? I only play old games Iām not changing my gpu. I donāt fancy using drivers from AUR.
That is too early to say because we need to see how the Arch devs keep supporting the Nvidia packages.
But there are a few ways to handle this. It might be users will have to ignore Nvidia package updates at some point, but thatās only a short term workaround.
Then users need to consider these:
- Stick to nouveau, the open source kernel module.
- Use a driver from the AUR.
- Use an unofficial repo which has the correct Nvidia driver packages (but only if you trust that repo).
Or maybe someone from this community could provide a repo that supports the 580 series packages? 
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Thanks @manuel , if possible, it would be really helpful for this thread to be updated when more info is known about how the Arch devs will support pre-Turing cards and the 580 drivers, and what direction us EOS users should take. Or if someone from our community will step up 
As I posted above Iād rather not replace my card on an old Haswell PC Iām about to convert to purple, or commit the whole PC to e-waste 
Is it known around when the change in support will occur?
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That shouldnāt be necessary because at least the nouveau kernel driver will work probably for a long time still (although it is not the best for gaming).
Or probably you can use the iGPU provided your CPU includes one?
At least I donāt know this yet. If anyone knows, please chime in.
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As long the 580 driver keeps getting support in the kernel there is no issue.
Back in time when people used the 390 drivers for their legacy models it was supported way up till kernel 5.15/5.17 after that the driver did not work anymore on newer kernels.
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Thank you so much for the reply! This is a somewhat serious issue for some of us. I will keep my eye on the situation.
I find that the Nouveau driver causes my screens to flicker and even caused text burn on one (that thankfully went away after the LCD conditioning option).
I get that these are old architectures but mine is an ASUS GeForce GT 1030 2GB GDDR5 that I bought boxed and brand new earlier this year on Amazon for playing the games I already have on steam but havenāt played yet. I knew Iād regret buying Nvidia. I donāt personally expect anyone to waste time supporting these cards. I just bought a Pentium3 system on ebay so Iām hopefully (if it works) going back to the golden ages of gaming.
Cāest la vie!
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How long was that until the kernel stopped supporting the driver in that particular case?
Thanks for the info. So at some point I have to switch drivers because newer kernels wouldnāt support the old 580.
Until that I will keep an eye on driver updates, and add the 590 to the ignore list
The latest 390 driver dates back to 2021, the 5.15 kernel is a LTS kernel and is supported up to 2027 if i am not wrong.
The same will happen with 580 driver and kernel 6.18 (LTS). I even think the nvidia driver might be running fine on future kernel 6.xx updates until kernel 7.xx gets released.
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How do you add 590 to the ignore list? I assume it will be the same ānvidiaā package. Iād have thought weād just have to be careful when updating that package.
Yes, it will be the same package. So I just ignore the whole thing in pacman.conf. At least this is the plan
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You can ignore it in the pacman.conf file.
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Right so wait until the arch repo updates to 590, donāt update and then block it in pacman.conf?
I thought you meant you could version block it preemptively.
Youād maybe have to block all nvidia related packages to try and minimize dependency issues I suppose. Iāll wait and see if thereās more info about this Special Legacy Driver Support before I come to a conclusion.
No, you could pin the current version and/or add the nvidia package(s) to the ignore list.
There is no preemptive exclusion of future updates. Thus, you wonāt get the minor updates of the 580 driver.
In short: Itās unclear when the major version update to 590 will take place. And there is no need for intervention at the current point in time.
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I just kicked my nvidia out of my PC, as i am tired of ongoing problems of all kinds with these proprietary driver stuff. NVIDIA classified my TU117 chip as legacy, meaning it gets least priority for fixing issues in drivers, and driver development. Now i have a Radeon and the trouble stops ā at least i hope soā¦
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