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.

  • LeFantome@programming.dev
    1·
    24 days ago

    There is so much misinformation and bad advice in this thread.

    Thankfully, there are a few that correctly just say install nvidia-580xx-dkms

    You can install new kernels after that. There is nothing to manually manage. They do not have to be LTS.

    • Sir_Premiumhengst@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      24 days ago

      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.

      • LeFantome@programming.dev
        1·
        24 days ago

        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.

        https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA

  • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
    1·
    24 days ago

    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).

  • doodoo_wizard@lemmy.ml
    01·
    25 days ago

    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.