Legacy Nvidia GPU and Wayland support: tl;dr reference page

[isaac0clarke (Isaac Clarke)]

Hello, good morning.

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I have created this page as an EASY TO FIND and DIRECT SOURCE to allow anyone (me included) to understand how to handle Legacy Hardware (which still exists and will keep getting used until it all breaks down forever) with newer software.

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Obviously, there are MANY differences even among “legacy”, because a 2002 computer and a 2012 computer are VERY different.
This page will focus on anything since the Pentium 4 onwards (not before 2000) because basically all “normal” Distros require CPU Instruction Sets which may not even exist prior the Pentium 4!
(Also, software like Steam requires a Pentium 4 at minimum, it will not run on a Pentium 3 or 2 if one wants to ACTUALLY use it!)

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So:
As long as there are enough resources, Linux Distros don’t really care about the CPU and RAM of the system; the storage solution and the way it’s connected (IDE or SATA, HDD or SSD) also are not crucial.
The main issue one will face is the GPU support.
(Be it a proper dedicated GPU or an iGPU; Legacy AMD and Intel will tend to play better and easier with Linux compared to Nvidia, so Nvidia will tend to be the focus of attention when needing support.)

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I am gonna say this here loud and clear: SOME Legacy Nvidia GPUs MAY work fine enough, at least for normal Desktop use, on modern Fedora (Wayland) with the Nouveau driver.
You will NOT be “le epic gaming” with a GTX 780ti, but if that’s not your goal then at least this works.

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Let’s tackle this with a practical example:

I am working with a old All In One PC.

It came out with Windows 7 and has a TouchScreen.

Its CPU is the E5300, it has 2gb of (maybe) DDR2 and all is mounted on a Pegatron IPM 31 Motherboard.

It had a 7200RPM 300gb HDD as storage and no dedicated GPU.

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I got my old GT 710 in there and a SSD to install Fedora KDE (X11 is going the way of the dodo, so any “Just use a X11 Distro” suggestions won’t actually help in this case, this is the purpose of this post) with the goal to see how modern Linux actually fairs on such hardware.

For now I left the default Nouveau driver installed. The computer works without any graphical glitch, at least as far as I was able to see.
Any performance problem is mainly due that Fedora KDE ain’t the lightest Operating System one could have chosen to install.

[Me trying to maybe upgrade the RAM from 2 to 4 or 6 gb aside…] What I want to focus on is the GPU.

Anyone with basic reading comprehension can understand what’s being said here, so I want to ask something different:

My goal is to make the GPU work somewhat better, but for what I’ve read Wayland isn’t well supported on Drivers before 550 (and the GT 710’s latest drivers are the 470, from 2021).

Would it even make sense to install such drivers for the GT 710?

Sense or not, if I (or anyone else) ever wanted to test such drivers in the most painless way possible, is there a way to keep both the Legacy Driver and the Nouveau driver installed and to switch between them easily/quickly (not asking for magic, reboots are always a given obvious fact) other than the method here described?

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For the sake of informating oneself,
if one was to install either the drivers from here or the official Nvidia drivers (not adviced, but still an option), other than the “Uninstall and Recover” instructions (which I followed once when I was fooling around with another PC), is there another way to “fix a mistake”?

[computersavvy (Jeff V)]

@isaac0clarke

GT 710

Just a note to add

If the nvidia GPU is legacy and the user wants to use wayland and not use X11 then they MUST use the nouveau driver (and also must forgo hardware acceleration of graphics). The older nvidia drivers which support hardware acceleration on nvidia (versions 470 and earlier) do not support wayland.

It is an either/or situation when using those older nvidia GPUs & drivers. Either use the nvidia drivers with X11 and have hardware accelerated graphics, or use the nouveau drivers with wayland and do not have hardware accelerated graphics.

[isaac0clarke (Isaac Clarke)]

Yes, what you have said was already said in the post.

Wayland on Nouveau through the GT 710 seems to be a decent experience, so I don’t have to rely on the PC’s Integrated Graphics (forgot what it has, it’s mounted on the MOBO), allowing for a smoother and cooler functioning of the PC.

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Now, that said:
I believe that there may have been MOBOs which support the Pentium 4 and had AGP graphics, but even if not, I want this page to be of support for any Legacy Hardware.
The GT 710 is a 2013-ish GPU, and even so it’s almost 13 years newer than anything which came out in 2000.

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I do not believe, in my ignorance, that making custom drivers for Legacy GPU may be a once done & done solution, since by time merely passing some feature may just be missing compared to Nouveau (which I also do not know how it works; I ASSUME that it still runs on the GPU in this case of Legacy Hardware, but if not I’d like to get a source where I and anyone else can inform oneself about Nouveau’s workings).

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I want to make one thing clear:

The computer I am working on is not and will never be used as a main computer by anyone.

I already have multiple computers for everyday use and the main one I use is also the most powerful one I have.
I may seek help for some Linux shenanigans when these PCs have problems too, but the AIO PC is mainly a collection piece, and then a “novelty item” because of my hobby.

I will also be using this AIO with both Windows 7 and Windows XP (once I find OS Images which actually work) for the sake of having such PC in my home and to see how it performs, but the use I have it for Linux and the reason I made this post are also both the same: I want to see how this stuff may work and I want to make a user-friendly page where other people can come and actually learn how this stuff works.

[isaac0clarke (Isaac Clarke)]

Just to leave something more written on this page:

OF COURSE you can either use an older Distro (version or just discontinued) to run old hardware, but there lies the same issue as using Windows 7 in this day & age.

An alternative may be a Distro with no human-friendly UI (basically Arch used as DOS) and launching applications from the terminal (as my IGNORANT self is just making things up right now, to brainstorm) so that having older drivers wouldn’t hurt performance (by “desktop” use or “gaming” use).