[Pre-Install] Upgrade or not?

[oldgeek]

Ive just received a notification that I can upgrade from my 24.04 LTS to 26.04 LTS, but I'm not sure if I should. The problem is my graphics card. I have a Nvidia GTE Force 730 graphics card and the proprietary 470 driver plus X-org. I believe the 470 driver is no longer supported, and X-org is being phased out, so I'm wondering what will happen if I upgrade. Is there a more recent Nvidia driver which would support my graphics card for 26.04 without changing the graphic characteristics? Will the 730 card support Wayland? Or do I have to replace a graphics card which is working fine and has never given me a problem? I have another 200 days or so before 24.04 is no longer supported, but I'd rather know as soon as possible. Any recommendations would be most welcome.

[kc1di]

I believe that if you upgrade it's going to update the kernel and it will be wayland only. I think you can revert to xorg but not sure about the kernel. Either one of those update would effectively stop your Nvidia card from working. So I would do some research first before upgrading.

[skyfishgoo]

can anyone confirm if the 470 driver is available in the 26.04 repositories?

can anyone confirm if the plasma-session-x11 is included in the 26.04 repositories?


it's not ideal, but you can still download the driver from the nvidia website as a .run file NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-470.256.02.run with all of it's associated weirdness.

[claydoh]

24,04's kernel has been at 26.04's 7.0.0 for a while now,

the x11 session package is definitely available. I cannot recall if it is needed to be aded after the upgrade or not, though. It isn't in my terminal history, and I haven't dug through old apt logs to see. It is installed for me, though I do not use it, but I can't remember if I added it myself or not. I would not normally, as I do not use it or need it, unless I needed to test something.

Note that in 24.04, the 470- driver is just a "wrapper" or metapackage now that installs the 535 driver; the 470 was dropped by Nvidia ages ago. So you might want to check which actual driver is being used. The 470 iirc does not work on kernels past 6.11. There hasn't been a 470 driver package past 24.04, or slightly later.

If one really needs 470 specifically:
https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2026/07/install-nvidia-470-ubuntu/#:~:text=errors%2E-,Option%202%3A%20Install%20NVIDIA%2Dprovided%20dri ver%20with%20community%20patches
https://github.com/joanbm/nvidia-470xx-linux-mainline

I haven't noted any easy sources for patched versions of 470 like there used to be for previous Legacy drivers, via PPAs

[oldgeek]

Claydoh, so if I decide to upgrade, can I download from Nvidia the 535 driver? I remember an uǵrade a month or so ago involving Nvidia 470 and 535 drivers and X-org, which totally borked my resolution by switching to Wayland and the Nouveau driver. Would that happen if I use Plasma 6 on 26.04? What I'm trying to do is avoid buying a new graphics card since the one I have works very well. But I still want to have Plasma 6 and the latest versions of the software. Is this possible?

[claydoh]

Claydoh, so if I decide to upgrade, can I download from Nvidia the 535 driver?

I...really don't know. It doesn't look like it. It may not work on the current kernel versions.

What is your GPU?

It seems nvidia also dropped 535 support very recently, so the 535 driver points to 580 in Resolute now. So 470 points to 535 which points to 580 (I am afraid to see if the 580 driver points to anything. )

So you need to verify which physical driver version you are actually running, not the packages installed. I would assume the 580.

If your card is not supported by NVIDIA any longer, you may be stuck using the standard Nouveau


Someone has a PPA with patched/modded versions of these drivers now, but I am not sure if I can recommend it yet.


This is where having a test install will be helpful, to see how different drivers work.
A live session can give some indication on how well the most current Nouveau works, but probably not a complete one.

[oldgeek]

It seems my graphics card is obsolete, so I guess I'll have to get one that is supported. In the meantime, I'll stick with what I've got until the 'warranty? runs out....Thanks to everyone for their input.

[kc1di]

It seems my graphics card is obsolete, so I guess I'll have to get one that is supported. In the meantime, I'll stick with what I've got until the 'warranty? runs out....Thanks to everyone for their input.

If you do not do heavy gaming I would try for a Intell gpu as they are well supported in Linux. Nvidia can be a problem even with newer cards.

[oshunluvr]

If you do not do heavy gaming I would try for a Intell gpu as they are well supported in Linux. Nvidia can be a problem even with newer cards.

If you want better performance for gaming, IME AMD GPUs work very well and drivers are in the kernel so plug-and-play.

[vanadiumboy]

I have a nVidia 650 GTX 2 GB. There aren't nVidia drivers available for it either, for Kubuntu 24.04, from inside the Kubuntu System Settings.
I downloaded the official driver from nvidia just now but I haven't tried it.

I do know that for my nVidia GTX 980, Kubuntu 24.04 has the driver. I think it is 470.xx something. I did some gaming on it recently.