Nvidia Will Retire Many of Their Legacy Linux Graphics Drivers

Nvidia 440.59 released

Nvidia announced that it plans to retire some of their legacy Linux graphics drivers at the end of 2022, and will no longer provide further updates to some some very old GPU drivers.

According to Nvidia, the Nvidia 340, 304, 173.14, 96.43, and 71.86 legacy Linux graphics driver series will no longer be maintained. The company has no plans to continue updating these old drivers.

The Linux 340 legacy driver series currently supports G8x, G9x, and GT2xx GPUs, as well as motherboard chipsets based on them. The current and last release is 340.108 and supports Linux kernel 5.4 and X.Org Server 1.20.

Furthermore, the Linux 304 legacy driver series will be the last to support the NV4x and G7x GPUs, as well as related motherboard chipsets. The current and last release is 304.137 and supports Linux kernel 4.13 and X.Org Server 1.19.

The Nvidia 173.14.39, 96.43.23, and 71.86.15 Linux legacy drivers are also the last in their series. These are very old releases that haven’t received updates since 2011-2013. Nvidia has no plans to support them, so most probably these will be removed soon.

Lastly, the Nvidia 390 legacy Linux graphics driver is the last to support GF1xx “Fermi” GPUs. This series will continue to receive support for new Linux kernel and X.Org Server releases for the three years, until the end of 2022.

The current and recommended Nvidia graphics driver for Linux systems is 440.44, which was released in December 2019 and supports the current X.Org Server and Linux kernel versions.

Last updated 4 years ago

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