Arch Linux

nphuracm

Member

From: China

Registered: 2022-07-16

Posts: 60

[Solved?] Nvidia 304.xx drivers?

First, some background.
I own a 7300 GT on an old PC that comes from the 2000s. The PC (along with the card) was my cousin's at first, and my father told me that the cousin spent hours and hours trying to persuade his mother (my aunt) to have this legendary card in his PC. So I won't replace this card for it's a symbol of a 'victory' in such events. I also own a PC which already has decent hardware so there is no need to upgrade this old box at all if I just want a good enough Arch experience.

And one day I thought about GNU/Linux on it. At first I used KDE neon. Rendering errors like weird shapes and ghost images happen. So I chose the proprietary drivers. I need 304. Can't get nvidia 304 to work at all. Distro packages face dep errors, and the official nvidia package fails because it used the deprecated SUBDIRS. Simply throwing kernel v4.4.0 into it only leads to initramfs shell and kernel panic, all due to some "root not found" error. Then I used arch. Tried to compile older Linux kernel (earlier than 5.3). No avail. Searched the AUR for Nvidia 304 drivers. Still no avail. The earliest in the AUR is 340. I thought NVIDIA said that they were still maintaining 304 drivers in their legacy driver support page.

Any solutions to this?

Last edited by nphuracm (2023-01-15 17:44:46)

jonno2002

Member

Registered: 2016-11-21

Posts: 702

Re: [Solved?] Nvidia 304.xx drivers?

Unsupported drivers

If you have an older card, NVIDIA no longer actively supports drivers for your card. This means that these drivers do not officially support the current Xorg version. It thus might be easier to use the nouveau driver, which supports the old cards with the current Xorg.

However, NVIDIA's legacy drivers are still available and might provide better 3D performance/stability.

    For the Tesla (NV50/G80-90-GT2XX) series, install the nvidia-340xx-dkmsAUR package.
    For the Curie (NV40/G70) series and older, drivers are no longer packaged for Arch Linux.

looks like your stuck with nouveau drivers.

you could use debian 9 (stretch) which supports the 304 drivers, although it just became unsupported on june 30th so no more security updates, fine if you arent connected to the net though, depends what the machine is going to be used for.

JaydenDev

Member

Registered: 2022-07-11

Posts: 172

Re: [Solved?] Nvidia 304.xx drivers?

Unsupported drivers

If you have an older card, NVIDIA no longer actively supports drivers for your card. This means that these drivers do not officially support the current Xorg version. It thus might be easier to use the nouveau driver, which supports the old cards with the current Xorg.

However, NVIDIA's legacy drivers are still available and might provide better 3D performance/stability.

    For the Tesla (NV50/G80-90-GT2XX) series, install the nvidia-340xx-dkmsAUR package.
    For the Curie (NV40/G70) series and older, drivers are no longer packaged for Arch Linux.

looks like your stuck with nouveau drivers.

you could use debian 9 (stretch) which supports the 304 drivers, although it just became unsupported on june 30th so no more security updates, fine if you arent connected to the net though, depends what the machine is going to be used for.

Nouveau drivers are the worst graphics drivers for gaming!

1. Minecraft when launched, is terribly broken with nouveau. 'Broken' meaning jumbled pixels, rendering errors, etc.
2. Source games, they will run at an FPS lower than that of a toaster.

So, Nouveau won't work for gaming. If you don't game, go ahead use Noveau! If you do, whelp your in for a big rabbit hole!

---

System Specs:
Intel Core i5-2400 Nvidia GTX 1050ti Logitech G402 Hyperion Fury (Mouse) BestBuy Essentials USB Keyboard
Software Specifications:
Desktop Environment: KDE Plasma Window Manager: KWin Operating System: Arch Linux (btw)

burrezo

Member

Registered: 2022-10-03

Posts: 1

Re: [Solved?] Nvidia 304.xx drivers?

Hi all, one way, "debian path": https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic. … 9&t=335583

MrEvilBreakfast

Member

From: Abbotsford, BC

Registered: 2011-11-03

Posts: 30

Re: [Solved?] Nvidia 304.xx drivers?

I dunno if you are still interested in this, but the 304xx drivers are available on internet archive, literally all the releases, and the 304xx-utils package too.

The caveat being you'll have to use an older version of xorg which will invariably cause a problem with updated X packages.

https://archive.org/details/archlinux_pkg_nvidia-304xx
https://archive.org/details/archlinux_p … 04xx-utils

I was looking into this recently as I have a laptop with a GeForce Go 7950 GTX that I want to install Arch on.

nphuracm

Member

From: China

Registered: 2022-07-16

Posts: 60

Re: [Solved?] Nvidia 304.xx drivers?

I dunno if you are still interested in this, but the 304xx drivers are available on internet archive, literally all the releases, and the 304xx-utils package too.

The caveat being you'll have to use an older version of xorg which will invariably cause a problem with updated X packages.

https://archive.org/details/archlinux_pkg_nvidia-304xx
https://archive.org/details/archlinux_p … 04xx-utils

I was looking into this recently as I have a laptop with a GeForce Go 7950 GTX that I want to install Arch on.

Appreciated.
btw man that's necroposting