NVIDIA Kepler Mainline Driver Support Nears Retirement, Starting With Notebook GPUs

[Hibbelharry]

False. There are plenty of reasons to buy AMD, but this isn't one of them. Nothing's changed with this news in regards to Nvidia's driver support model and this news shouldn't surprise anyone.

It seems you never used nvidia legacy drivers. They need to cope with x.org, kernel, gcc and some other updates as well. You will quite often see things beeing without working support for some time, and keep googling the net for some community patches to make things work again. This is less an issue in windows, where the fundamentals don't change that often: If you've got drivers for Windows 10, you will have drivers for Windows 10, and most of the time they will keep working. But if you go from Fedora 30 to Fedora 31, you might well be out of luck for a while.

I got into that troubles quite some times, maintaining our business workstations, and it's a pita. This will become worse, with nouveau support for newer nvidia chips beeing ín a sad state.

Wherever I can, i stay away from nvidia in linux.

[Pranos]

You still can use Nouveau.
Wheres the problem?

[Hi-Angel]

One more reason to buy AMD.

False. There are plenty of reasons to buy AMD, but this isn't one of them. Nothing's changed with this news in regards to Nvidia's driver support model and this news shouldn't surprise anyone.

Well, I use everyday a laptop with Radeon 6620G, released in 2011. I'm pretty sure, it still got a freaking lot of time before Mesa and kernel drop support for it. So I'm still getting benefits from improvements in kernel in Mesa (even if nobody works on the r600g driver per se). I also can contribute a code of my own, and improve this driver. Which in fact I did — contributing small improvements doesn't require much of intrinsic knowledge.

Do you feel the difference now?

[chithanh]

That probably means that Kepler will never see support for the new allocator library for Wayland in the proprietary drivers. So supporting NVidia proprietary Kepler users means keeping around EGLStreams code indefinitely.

[pmorph]

This is a bit sad, kepler cards are still perfectly capable for anyone not in just for gaming.

[DanL]

*Clarification* When I said this wasn't one more reason to buy AMD, I meant that this is nothing new and has already been a reason to buy AMD if one doesn't like the Nvidia legacy blobs.

It seems you never used nvidia legacy drivers.

I used the 340.xx driver on an 8400GS with Debian sid, and yes, it did lag behind a little bit, but the patched versions rolled out fairly quickly or I could hunt the down the patch myself if I got really impatient. It wasn't too bad. And nouveau was in good shape for it, so eventually I moved to that.

This will become worse, with nouveau support for newer nvidia chips being in a sad state.

Yeah, if you're looking to keep using a GPU for a long time, that's a consideration. I'm guessing 4 or 5 years of blob support plus a few years of legacy blob support keeps most folks happy. I know my GTX950 Maxwell will be moved to legacy status in the near future. I hope Nvidia will release the signed firmware for legacy products so they can eventually work with nouveau. I will not hold my breath though.

Well, I use everyday a laptop with Radeon 6620G, released in 2011. I'm pretty sure, it still got a freaking lot of time before Mesa and kernel drop support for it. So I'm still getting benefits from improvements in kernel in Mesa (even if nobody works on the r600g driver per se).

Yeah, that's great. Please see my clarification. My laptop is a Llano as well.

[starshipeleven]

And that's still longer support than almost all LTS distros (except Ubuntu 18.04).

Probably a hint that Linux ecosystem isn't supposed to be used like that.

Still, you forgot RHEL/CentOS.

[starshipeleven]

That probably means that Kepler will never see support for the new allocator library for Wayland in the proprietary drivers. So supporting NVidia proprietary Kepler users means keeping around EGLStreams code indefinitely.

Isn't EGLStreams here to stay anyway? Once GNOME added support for it, and KDE is also receiving contributions from NVIDIA developers to add support for it, I doubt they will do what was proposed as a future thing.

[starshipeleven]

I hope Nvidia will release the signed firmware for legacy products so they can eventually work with nouveau. I will not hold my breath though.

I'm also highly skeptical they will release anything.

[creative]

This is rather lame. The legendary 780ti is still usable today.

I don't feel there is anything wrong with legacy drivers especially considering that they keep your card usable and able to game with.

I am just hoping my gtx 1070 lives as long as your 780ti, like not die on me. I hope I have as good luck with it as I had with my gts 450 fermi.
I had a PNY 9800gt that just decided to croak on me for no reason, that is when I had to buy the gts 450.