With the Arch Linux packages for the NVIDIA official graphics driver moving to the now-stable NVIDIA 590 driver series that drops the GeForce GTX 900 and GTX 1000 series GPU support, Arch Linux users with those old Maxwell and Pascal graphics cards will need to transition to using the NVIDIA legacy driver packages from the Arch Linux AUR. Meanwhile for those on Turing and newer with the NVIDIA 590 driver will enjoy the open-source kernel modules by default being used.
It’s been three and a half years since NVIDIA began publishing their official open-source kernel module sources. They remain out-of-tree but updated in-step with each new driver release. Those open-source kernel modules have evolved into being the default with the packaged NVIDIA Linux driver and for Blackwell GPUs is the only option for their official kernel driver with their prior closed-source kernel driver no longer being extended. That modern NVIDIA open-source kernel driver used by their official driver stack only supports RTX 20 “Turing” GPUs and newer due to depending upon the NVIDIA GPU System Processor (GSP).
Greetings to all the other Maxwell and Pascal users…
nvidia-580xx-dkms(and similiar legacy drivers) is your new best friend. And given the next wave of rediculous price spikes probably for some time…Sucks to stop getting the new stuff. But with DKMS, sticking with 580 does not seem too terrible.
Realistically older generations didn’t get new stuff in updated drivers for quite some time anyway, so yeah… Doesn’t matter much.
Honestly, if I had a newer card I would be more concerned about that general shift to open source drivers at the moment as they are still far from comparable performance-wise.
I’m still rocking my 1080ti. I was hoping to do an upgrade in 2026, but all this AI bullshit fucked this up again…
I upgraded o an RTX5050 just before all the prices skyrocketed. Glad I did, and also glad I didn’t go for the higher end cards at the time. I’ve been quite impressed at the stability and graphics quality while dipping into Linux gaming.
I have been waiting so long for this.
What is keeping it out of tree though? Can we not create a community driver that talks to the NVIDiA open source stuff?
It would be best to get all the Open Source stuff into the kernel even if users are going to pair it with the proprietary blob from NVIDIA.
