Thanks (I really mean it) and... Goodbye

General system Community contributions
1

Hi All, after dabbling in Linux for over 25 years, two years ago I decided to finally use Linux as my main system. I still needed occasionally to dual boot into Win 10, but those events became more and more rare. My initial needs were: KDE Plamsa & up-to-date software. EndeavourOS fitted that perfectly, and while I have distro-hopped numerous times on other machines, my main system has remained EOS. It has remained trouble-free and exactly what I wanted.

However, my last step in leaving M$ behind was getting Age of Empires II DE running on Linux, and this meant getting the Nvidia GPU drivers installed on my rather old but much loved laptop. How hard could that be??? Well, is it turns out, I believe it is impossible under any Arch or Ubuntu based distribution in my case, as the Nvidia GT 650M GPU required the 470 series drivers which are no longer supported by Nvidia, or, it seems, by any recent kernel. After several weeks of serious effort, every trick and suggestion failed, until 2 days ago when a random post appeared on r/voidlinux describing how they got their almost identical GPU working. Yes, it worked! Void Linux, 6.6 LTS kernel and the 470 series drivers.

So, thank you all for your marvelous work and a truly fantastic distro, but alas my time here is ending. I go boldly into the Voidā€¦.

9 Likes
2

Have fun with your new endeavour with void.

:waving_hand:t2:

4 Likes
3

Wish you all the best :vulcan_salute:

3 Likes
4

Just because youā€™re not using EndeavourOS or Arch doesnā€™t mean you canā€™t stick around here. Thereā€™s plenty of members here who use other distributions other than EndeavourOS and Arch. Youā€™re welcome to stay :slight_smile:

10 Likes
5

I wish you the best of luck Trevor on your Linux journey. I wish you a positive experience and hope you enjoy using Void Linux.

1 Like
6

And it was VERY remiss of me not to mention that this is one of the friendliest and most helpful communities in the Linux space. Well done everyone!!! Yes, I will still lurk and maybe add a few words when I have something helpful to add :slight_smile:

12 Likes
7

Well i guess Void it is. I do have to say i have a hard time believing the GT 650M canā€™t work on EOS with the 470 drivers. But itā€™s your hardware and your choice. Have fun on Void.

8

Yeah, Iā€™m a bit stunned by that too. I think the issue is in the base Arch packages, as I canā€™t get it running on pure Arch either. Maybe Iā€™m missing something simple, but Iā€™ve spent weeks on this, and since ā€œit just worksā€ on Void, thatā€™s where I am for the moment. I hate to give up on EOS/Arch, so Iā€™ll probably come back to it from time to time and see if I see what I missed.

1 Like
9

And this is not possible with arch/endeavour os ?

10

As Iā€™ve said above, it should be possible, but I have tried for several weeks, with both EOS & clean installs of Arch, and have yet to succeed. I will add that Ubuntu based distros have also failed, so I suspect some ā€œuniversalā€ issue. Of all the distros I have tried, only Void has succeeded.
I will also add that, as a recently retired systems/data analyst, Iā€™m usually pretty good at following documentation and doing internet searches.

2 Likes
11

It would be interesting to see how Void has solved that.
Maybe it is suitable kernel parameters, GPU settings, additional package(s), or something else?

12

Yes. I am wondering the same. Beyond my skill level to check those things.

13

It would be just a small number of commands:

cat /proc/cmdline
pacman -Q | grep -P 'nvidia|linux'
lspci -vnn | grep -PA11 'VGA|3D|Display'
lsmod | grep -P 'nvidia|nouveau|i915'

If you could copy (on Void) the output of these commands here, that would help.
Maybe this doesnā€™t reveal everything, but is a start.

14 
[trevor@void ~]$ cat /proc/cmdline
BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-6.6.117_1 root=UUID=2edc2e1d-83da-41cf-bf8f-4161e4751774 ro loglevel=4
[trevor@void ~]$ lspci -vnn | grep -PA11 ā€˜VGA|3D|Displayā€™
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0166] (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0578]
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 27
Memory at f1000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [virtual] [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: 
Kernel driver in use: i915
Kernel modules: i915

00:14.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI Host Controller [8086:1e31] (rev 04) (prog-if 30 [XHCI])

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GK107M [GeForce GT 650M] [10de:0fd1] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0578]
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 32
Memory at f0000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at c0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M]
I/O ports at 3000 [size=128]
Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [virtual] [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: 
Kernel driver in use: nvidia
Kernel modules: nouveau, nvidia_drm, nvidia

[trevor@void ~]$ lsmod | grep -P ā€˜nvidia|nouveau|i915ā€™
nvidia_drm             77824  2
nvidia_modeset       1511424  3 nvidia_drm
nvidia              40755200  80 nvidia_modeset
i915                 4153344  12
intel_gtt              24576  1 i915
drm_buddy              20480  1 i915
i2c_algo_bit           20480  1 i915
drm_display_helper    217088  1 i915
cec                    86016  2 drm_display_helper,i915
drm_kms_helper        241664  3 drm_display_helper,nvidia_drm,i915
ttm                   102400  1 i915
drm                   819200  15 drm_kms_helper,drm_display_helper,nvidia,drm_buddy,nvidia_drm,i915,ttm
video                  77824  4 dell_wmi,dell_laptop,i915,nvidia_modeset
15

[trevor@void ~]$ xbps-query -l | grep -P ā€˜nvidia|linuxā€™
ii liblastlog2-2.41.2_1 Lastlog replacement library from util-linux
ii libsmartcols-2.41.2_1 Table or Tree library from util-linux
ii linux-base-2023.05.29_1 Linux kernel base dependencies
ii linux-firmware-amd-20251111_1 Binary firmware blobs for the Linux kernel - AMD CPU/GPU microcode
ii linux-firmware-broadcom-20251111_1 Binary firmware blobs for the Linux kernel - Broadcom network blobs
ii linux-firmware-intel-20251111_1 Binary firmware blobs for the Linux kernel - Intel GPU microcode
ii linux-firmware-network-20251111_1 Binary firmware blobs for the Linux kernel - network
ii linux-firmware-nvidia-20251111_1 Binary firmware blobs for the Linux kernel NVIDIA GPU microcode
ii linux-lts-6.6_1 Linux LTS (Long Term Support) kernel meta package
ii linux-lts-headers-6.6_1 Linux longterm support kernel headers meta package
ii linux6.6-6.6.117_1 Linux kernel and modules (6.6 series)
ii linux6.6-headers-6.6.117_1 Linux kernel and modules (6.6 series) - source headers for 3rd party modules
ii nvidia470-470.256.02_2 NVIDIA drivers (GKxxx ā€œKeplerā€) - Libraries and Utilities
ii nvidia470-dkms-470.256.02_2 NVIDIA drivers (GKxxx ā€œKeplerā€) - DKMS kernel module
ii nvidia470-gtklibs-470.256.02_2 NVIDIA drivers (GKxxx ā€œKeplerā€) - GTK+ libraries
ii nvidia470-libs-470.256.02_2 NVIDIA drivers (GKxxx ā€œKeplerā€) - common libraries
ii nvidia470-libs-32bit-470.256.02_2 NVIDIA drivers (GKxxx ā€œKeplerā€) - common libraries (32bit)
ii psmisc-23.7_1 Small set of utilities that use the linux proc filesystem
ii util-linux-2.41.2_1 Miscellaneous linux utilities
ii util-linux-common-2.41.2_1 Miscellaneous linux utilities - common files

16

Thanks for the output! :+1:

How do you select which GPU to use?

The main difference seems to be the version of the kernel.
Note that the AUR has linux-lts66 which is the same version as Void has.
So this might work for your case. Not sure if you still are willing to try it.

Note also that the support for kernel version 6.6 is mentioned to end in the end of year 2026 (see https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html). This can change (and for LTS kernels it often has), but thereā€™s no guarantee (yet).

17

This page reports the 6.6lts kernel as being EOL at end december 2026

1 Like
18

Iā€™ve already tried the aur lts66 kernel, no luck.

As for Dec 2026, thatā€™s 2 months better than Win 10 ESU :laughing:

1 Like
19

And what about January 2027 and beyond, then?

20

image
image474Ɨ474 23.7 KB

4 Likes