NVIDIA Drops Pascal Support On Linux, Causing Chaos On Arch Linux (hackaday.com)
- Reference: 0180463217
- News link: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/12/27/0744237/nvidia-drops-pascal-support-on-linux-causing-chaos-on-arch-linux
- Source link: https://hackaday.com/2025/12/26/nvidia-drops-pascal-support-on-linux-causing-chaos-on-arch-linux/
"What's more surprising is the terrible way that this is being handled by certain Linux distributions, with Arch Linux currently a prime example.?"
> On these systems, updating the OS with a Pascal, Maxwell or similarly unsupported GPU will [2]result in the new driver failing to load and thus the user getting kicked back to the CLI to try and sort things back out there. This issue is summarized by [Brodie Robertson] [3]in a recent video .
"Users with GTX 10xx series and older cards must switch to the legacy proprietary branch to maintain support," explains an [4]announcement on the Arch Linux mailing list . But Hackaday [5]points out that using the legacy option "breaks Steam as it relies on official NVIDIA dependencies, which requires an additional series of hacks to hopefully restore this functionality.
"Fortunately the Arch Wiki provides a starting point on [6]what to do ."
[1] https://hackaday.com/2025/12/26/nvidia-drops-pascal-support-on-linux-causing-chaos-on-arch-linux/
[2] https://lists.archlinux.org/archives/list/arch-announce@lists.archlinux.org/thread/AMPPOBL6ZQPEOQ722IE3O5BO3PPWCQNA/
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-obijeo_bU
[4] https://lists.archlinux.org/archives/list/arch-announce@lists.archlinux.org/thread/AMPPOBL6ZQPEOQ722IE3O5BO3PPWCQNA/
[5] https://hackaday.com/2025/12/26/nvidia-drops-pascal-support-on-linux-causing-chaos-on-arch-linux/
[6] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA
Still using my 1080Ti (Score:2)
It's fine for everything if you're not interested in the latest games.
Re: Still using my 1080Ti (Score:2)
To be fair it still holds up in the latest games as long as you don't mind reducing all the bling/1080p. Genuinely legendary card given how long it's been relevant. Figures it would be software updates that killed it off rather than the hardware limits.
Re: (Score:2)
same here I still use old cards. They work fine for the little bit of rendering, gou computing, and ai inference I do.
Re: (Score:3)
You're completely correct, except it's still great for games too.
I'm still running plenty of my 1080p games on my GTX1070 no complaints at all, these are still strong and valid cards and I really don't have much incentive to upgrade.
As for the hilarious "what to do" instructions that are linked for Arch?
Step 1; don't use Arch. Step 2; Done.
I have no respect for a distro that doesn't respect my time and energy; one that reeks with the mentality that every day os tasks -should- have a high cognitive load and
Oh, Pascal refers to a VIDEO CARD (Score:5, Insightful)
I must admit, when I read the title my first thought was "why on earth would Arch Linux be using pascal rather than C or python?"
Re: (Score:3)
Same. At some point in the past they dropped support for both Fahrenheit and Celsius, I wonder what kind of confusion that would generate!
Re: (Score:1)
For the same reason they would use Rust - fashion.
Re: (Score:2)
I thought they had switched to Turbo Pascal a long time ago /s
Haven't bought Nvidia in years (Score:2, Insightful)
I had a a desktop whose Nvidia card lost Linux support many years ago.
They "generously" release drivers for Linux (and even FreeBSD), but only until they decide not to anymore.
It's just not worth it to buy from a company that treats its customers this way.
I've bought only non-hostile hardware since then.
All OSes (Score:2)
Nvidia uses a unified driver framework for Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD. Dropping all support for GTX 10 series and older was applied across the board in all their drivers, not just on Linux. This article is more about the mishandling of notification to end-users in the Arch ecosystem that did a normal "system update", which removed GPU support without warning for users of these GPUs. In the FreeBSD ecosystem, we use versioned drivers already, where the package name includes the driver version in it, and if
Re:All OSes (Score:4, Interesting)
this article is about a whining baby who desperately wants to get clicks on his youtube channel by sensationalising a gigantic nothing-burger.
Arch is a rolling release, news is posted on their site. This issue was known, there was a guideline posted on 20 Dec, I have absolutely no idea why Arch is being called out here. This guy needs to install ubuntu and STFU.
Re: (Score:2)
> This guy needs to install ubuntu and STFU.
No no no no no. You need to frame it properly in a ragebait way for the Youtuuubers. Try this guy needs to install Ubuntu and then post a 20minute video entitled "Why I switched from Arch to Ubuntu, and why you should too!"
Re: (Score:2)
> Try this guy needs to install Ubuntu and then post a 20minute video entitled "Why I switched from Arch to Ubuntu, and why you should too!"
I particularly love the people that have a "Arch is TRASH! Why you should install Ubuntu NOW!" video, then if you look at their feed, you notice a "Ubuntu is GARBAGE! You NEED to switch to Arch!" video.
AMD (Score:2)
I am glad I decided to get an AMD Radeon card. I used to always use NVidia (although I don't game) and got tired of jumping through hoops. When I built my last home system (Asus/AMD) five years ago, the MB had no on-board video. So I just reused my old cheap fanless NVidia.
But last year, I needed better hardware video codec support, so I was looking to update the card and was annoyed, because I really don't need much of a card and wanted something cheap and fanless, and nothing suitable was available. S
Arch Linux (Score:4, Insightful)
> What's more surprising is the terrible way that this is being handled by certain Linux distributions, with Arch Linux currently a prime example.
Arch isn't meant for people who just want something that works. You are expected to have the skills and willingness to adapt when packages change. I have been running it for 15 years, and during this time I have been forced to manually intervene multiple times in order to keep my system running. If you do not accept this philosophy, Arch is not the distro for you.
Blind Package Management (Score:2)
Most package management systems require us to figure out which card we have, figure out which package supports it, and install that.
Really we wanted "install the package that supports my card".
Apparently this current problem highlights this disconnect when a package no longer does what it used to but the package system blindly updates it anyway.
Being 2025, surely somebody in the past 30 years has floated a meta package management system to handle this mapping? Or an apt plugin? Anybody here know that hist
Re: (Score:2)
well... I'm nitpicking, but the proposed solution (made over a week ago) does indeed "install the package that supports my card". The issue is this then breaks downstream compatibility with Steam. So Arch are caught a bit between a rock and hard place there.
SteamOS is based on Arch, isn't it? (Score:2)
I imagine the Steam situation will get sorted out pretty quickly then.
Re: (Score:2)
No officially supported SteamOS systems have GTX 10xx series GPUs, though.
Is it? (Score:2)
Or is it just moving the support from the driver to the legacy driver package? You probably just need to "upgrade" to the right package and arch didn't manage the transition from nvidia-current to nvidia-legacy to be unnoticed by the user.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to. The proprietary drivers are simply moving support from one version to another. It's stupid, but that's how it is.
Meanwhile in FOSS world, Nouveau [1]supports Pascal (NV130) chipsets [freedesktop.org] though with some features not quite there yet (good enough for a daily driver for 90% of us, but if you want SLI or some similar features you'll have to wait)
Nvidia sucks, but they are getting better in terms of releasing documentation. This was a boneheaded way to deal with dropping
[1] https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/FeatureMatrix.html
Re: (Score:2)
> We so desperately need compulsory licensing, especially now since the newer cards are too expensive due to the "AI" ripoff
Pascal is a 10 year old graphics card. No we don't need compulsory licensing. What we need is a graceful way of handling something becoming unsupported. You said it yourself, new video cards are too expensive, why saddle them with more cost thanks to the requirement to support something that has outlived most cars.