So Arch just moved to NVIDIA 590 and dropped Pascal support. I’m running an older Predator laptop with a GTX 1070 (Pascal) + Intel iGPU. After the update, NVIDIA is basically gone, but Intel fallback still gives me a working desktop.
This machine was always a fallback gaming laptop, not my primary system, but I’d still like to make reasonable use of it.
My current situation: Arch Linux with KDE Plasma, Intel graphics works fine, NVIDIA 1070 is unusable unless I go legacy, Wayland currently working only because I’m on Intel.
From what I understand: NVIDIA legacy (580xx) = X11 only, Wayland + Pascal is basically dead.
Arch will keep moving kernels, so legacy drivers mean ongoing maintenance…
(picture related).
What I’m trying to decide:
Stick with Arch, install legacy NVIDIA, switch to X11, accept maintenance?
Ditch NVIDIA entirely, run Intel + Wayland, and treat the 1070 as dead weight?
Switch to a slower-moving distro (Debian?) just to keep X11 + NVIDIA working longer?
Or is there a better hybrid setup people are actually happy with?
I’m not looking to resurrect Pascal forever, just trying to choose the least stupid path for a secondary machine without fighting my system every update.
Curious what others with GTX 10xx laptops are actually doing in practice.
There is so much misinformation and bad advice in this thread.
Thankfully, there are a few that correctly just say install
nvidia-580xx-dkmsYou can install new kernels after that. There is nothing to manually manage. They do not have to be LTS.
Thanks! It seemed to me that this’d mean I had to run something like my custom kernel which I have to forever maintain myself.
Thanks for pointing me to the correct solution. I figure out implementation.
If you install a kernel from the Arch repos, DKMS will build the kernel module for you automatically as well as the initial RAM disk and boot entries. Kernel upgrades take a little longer but you do not have to do anything manually.
It will work with custom kernels too but, if you do build your own kernel, you have to make sure a couple of options are selected.
I usually give detailed responses, but honestly the correct response here is RTFM. The short answer is to install
nvidia-580xx-dkms.Arch wiki is such a great place that has the answer to most technical questions you might want to ask. I strongly dislike the idea that Arch is for advanced users, but it does expect you to read the documentation (which is why I dislike stuff like Manjaro that try to make Arch “accessible”, but end up leaving people in similar situations without even knowing where to look for the solution to their issues).
This is actually difficult for me. When the wiki starts talking about custom kernels, I don’t fully understand it yet. I’m learning, but that’s where things stop being obvious.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anyway thanks for pointing me to the exact location. My struggle is knowing what to implement / what the correct solution is. See, now that I know install
nvidia-580xx-dkmsis the right thing and won’t break things I know what to do. (if that makes sense?)If you know that that’s the right driver to install, what is your question?
Have you tried the aur package mentioned in the Arch News? https://archlinux.org/news/nvidia-590-driver-drops-pascal-support-main-packages-switch-to-open-kernel-modules/
I don’t see why it wouldn’t work with wayland.
Okay you have a point. Maybe I was too quick to let loose an anxious post.
One option that you could also consider is switching to CachyOS. It seems that they’re handling support for these legacy GPUs in a much nicer way: https://discuss.cachyos.org/t/announcement-maintenance-notice-nvidia-driver-restructuring-580xx-590xx/20010
No need to reinstall the entire os, just swap the driver packages…
Sure, I’d consider that the main option (and it had already been proposed by multiple people here). But, it also seems like that would come with quite a bit of additional hassle, as discussed below. I’ve personally had some quite annoying issues with incompatible DKMS modules… So, instead of using the unsupported AUR option, it might also be worth considering switching to a very similar distro that actually still supports this hardware configuration.
Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t cachyos deploying the exact same solution? The only difference seems to be that their package manager offers to swap the packages.
I don’t know if there are any differences between the two packages. But, the CachyOS version is part of their official repositories and doesn’t depend on the AUR. I don’t know if that would have any implications regarding how often you need to rebuild the module.
If arch doesn’t have version pinning then switch to a distribution that does.
Debian has version pinning, nvidia runs a third party repository and it has a pinning package you can install to get and stay with the 580 branch.
You can install NVIDIA-580-DKMS from the AUR. Problem solved.
I’m not as familiar with the aur as I am with apt and now dnf, is there a function to keep it from automatically installing something newer? That’s why I meant when I referred to pinning.
You can add a package to your ignore list, although that is not recommended for the longer term.
Yeah I didn’t want to make the bold and refreshing assertion that arch isnt appropriate for situations where gracefully handling an old package is a requirement but that was my initial read on the situation.
