NVIDIA To Stop Offering 32-bit Driver Support

[Hibbelharry]

They're still going to provide support for newer kernels/X for longer than that though, correct? Even the 340 series is supported until end of 2019.

Whenever any nvidia hardware enters the legacy state, you better move slow. Legacy drivers from nvidia are crap. The linux ecosystem is moving fast and you will run into compiler issues or ABI issues time and time again. I did in the past, we're doing a lot of work on linux systems at work, and it was a pain. I ended replacing quite some cards with AMD ones to get a stable solution.

[DanL]

Whenever any nvidia hardware enters the legacy state, you better move slow. Legacy drivers from nvidia are crap. The linux ecosystem is moving fast and you will run into compiler issues or ABI issues time and time again. I did in the past, we're doing a lot of work on linux systems at work, and it was a pain. I ended replacing quite some cards with AMD ones to get a stable solution.

I used the 340 driver on an 8400GS for a while without issue, so long as I didn't upgrade kernel/X before Nvidia added it to the driver. Eventually, I switched to nouveau so I didn't have to worry about that.

Oh, and that didn't answer the question.

[Anvil]

Why should they? 32 bit apps will continue to work.

true but without QA from Nvidia on 32bit installers of there drivers it'll put more pressure on companies to only deliver 64bit Hardware , even Windows1064bit isnt true 64bit OS,

[torsionbar28]

even Windows1064bit isnt true 64bit OS,

Some say it's not even a real OS.

[starshipeleven]

So in other words this is more about killing off 32bit kernel driver than anything else, right?

That and any other OS interface, Glibc, maybe Xorg or whatever else. They will only keep 32bit libs to work with 32bit programs, but any other 32-bit part is trashed.

That sounds sensible, one less platform without stable ABI to support

They are dropping 32bit also on Windows and BSD, so I doubt the Linux unstable ABI was a factor in this choice. Their "kernel driver" is little more than a shim so it's not hard to keep it synched, bulk of their driver is the same Windows driver with a wrapper.

I suspect they decided to do some internal restructuring and cleanups.

[starshipeleven]

Some say it's not even a real OS.

Some say it is not even real.

[starshipeleven]

They're still going to provide support for newer kernels/X for longer than that though, correct? Even the 340 series is supported until end of 2019.

The statement only says they will keep it in security-only-patch-life-support until 2019, but since it is talking of all OSes it supports (Windows/Linux/BSD) it's not specific enough.

Does the 340 driver state the same on its announcement? If it does then it may be as you say.

[DanL]

Does the 340 driver state the same on its announcement

This is all I can find: http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3142
As you can see, it hasn't been updated in years, so I don't know what branch will be the next legacy branch.

[starshipeleven]

Looks like R390 Drivers going to be a big one, its been in news for some weeks now with developer working on a work around for the Memory Allocation bug. This Year does seem to be the beginning of the end to 32 bit , won't be surprise if windows too drop 32 bit support in the next version

It all depends from what takes the lower end of Windows hardware. Currently the only place that still requires 32bit builds is the low-end tablet segment that has less than 3GB of RAM so it does not make sense to waste it by loading the horribly RAM-hungry "multilib" support in Windows.

These devices will never be able to connect to a dedicated GPU anyway, so the lack of NVIDIA driver on 32bit is a non-issue.

I assume they hope their new foray into WindowsARM and Qualcomm-powered laptops does not end in a massive flop. If it does not flop hard, then yeah, 32bit can finally die on Windows too.

[DanL]

Okay, so I see further/conflicting information:

Release 390 will be available in December 2017. The NVIDIA support team will continue to address critical bug and security issues in Release 390 until December 2020. Thereafter, critical security fixes will be provided until December 2021. Future driver enhancements, driver optimizations, and OS features (i.e., from future OS releases) in driver releases after Release 390 will not be incorporated.
NVIDIA intends to support security fixes as follows:

Priority Level	Support Timeframe
Low to Critical	Until December 2019
Critical Only	Until December 2021

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4606/