my gpu is gtx 1650 from laptop msi gf63. im wondering if after 10 years will the gpu still have a driver in linux ? im asking this to know if the life of gpu would be better with linux or windows. it may be an absurd question but it makes sense to me. as if the usecase its to play cyberpunk(yes it does work) on a sepfic version(cracked no updates).
will that version still be useable ten years from now on ubuntu with this laptop?
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Not same but last year Linux kernel officially dropped support for Pentium CPUs after 28years so I guess you are good for another 18 years
it may actually improve.
linux is open, so very old hardware can still be updated, and an open driver that’s supposed to be state of the art is already being made for 1000 series cards and up.
I’m running a 1060 from 12 years ago or more with Linix Mint on my desktop and it’s had no issues keeping up with drivers. That thing still shocks me with what it can pull off without even breaking a sweat. It’s hard to say what things will look like, as a whole, ten years from now, but considering I can still get updated drivers for a 300 series on a hobby rig I like to fuck with (it can run Borderlands 2, on high, what the fuck?!) I don’t think you have anything to stress about.
I use Linux on hardware older and less capable than yours, and usually the only real show-stopper I find is a lack of Vulkan support. I don’t use any nVidia hardware, but my understanding is that older chips are supported decently by current Linux drivers. So I’d say you’ll probably be fine.
As for ten years from now, it’s uncommon for Linux software to remove features, and even if it happens, there’s virtually always a way for you stay on an old version if you really need to, because there are no forced updates. If you’re careful you can sometimes even keep the old versions of things for old software that needs it, while still having the latest version for software that can use it.
My GTX 1060 just stopped receiving feature updates in november but it’s still supported with bug fixes and it is a GPU from 2016. There is a good chance your GTX 1650 will be supported for the next 10 years since the architecture is new enough to use the latest RTX drivers
I have the same GPU, how is the Cyberpunk performance?
on 1080p(low) i get 50 fps but it drops to 40 sometimes
Don’t you enable FSR?
i enabled it yes
All my machines still work after a decade or two. As time goes on, the opensource drivers for old cards gets more reliable.
My partners PC recently had its GPU go “unsupported” by nvidia, but it works just fine with the driver that now supports it.
do they game on it? im concered with the gpu not being able to play the games it plays now(locked at same game version) in years. so is my fear logical or not?
She does. Just about everything Just Works on Arch + Steam + GTX 1060
Check protondb and assume that it works unless they specifically resist it working with kernel level anticheat.
thanks ,that seems good. i dont play any online game just cracks. do you know if they work good with linux? (fitgirl,dodi etc)
edit
also if this isnt a nosy question,what does she play? im intersed in knowing if these are just indie games that run on anything or real games.
I don’t play pirated games, the convenience of “it just works” and accumulating everything on steam directed me that way quite some time ago.
I’ve heard lutris and friends should make repacks work.
Edit: also “real games” only don’t work because the manufacturer chose to break it. There’s nothing special about what AAA does, other than abuse their customers. There’s no secret sauce. Only secretive source.
If it’s a Windows game, it’s still possible to play them via tools like Lutris and Bottles. Sometimes you can just double click the
.exefile, and Wine will auto-generate a prefix (i.e. directory where an instance of Wine is stored), and you can play it.Also, virtually all games are real games. Indie games do not “run on anything,” and most indie devs do not target multi-platform support, as that takes extra knowledge and effort. What makes it so Linux can run just about any game is a bunch of dedicated global volunteers who were somewhat recently given a leg up by Valve’s Proton.
The only thing she’d have problems with is games that use kernel-anticheat.
Check https://protondb.com/ to see if your games will run and/or what small tweaks you might need.
Nvidia will stop supporting the card officially around the same time on both platforms. With Linux, a viable open source driver may exist in the future, as there is work on nvk which should support that generation of card.
Also, you could use ubuntu premium pro extra to get longterm kernel support for years. So even if the old driver would break with a future kernel version, you could then use that kernel version for a long time
is the nvk good for gaming?
It’s still in development, so sometimes yes, sometimes no. Expect that to change and improve, however.
It will TECHNICALLY still work at whatever version Nvidia cuts off support at, which is pretty soon for GTX cards (they’ve already cut off the mobile counterparts). So you’ll stop getting updates, but it should still work as long as that driver is made available still in some form that whatever distro you are using can install it, or you compile it from scratch. I would not trust Nvidia’s installer to still be working by then in it’s current form because it’s a MESS.
so would the last driver nvidia releases for it be installable and useable on ubuntu after ten years? or would there be different driver to use?
My 2008 laptop runs Arch quite happily, interestingly enough (arch btw)
what is your de? and is that a thinkpad?
I would be less concerned about the GPU driver and more about the entire distro. Like most distros, Ubuntu has a release cycle where versions of everything are deprecated over time in favour of newer ones, and to expect that the entire OS will be fully supported in 10 years may be asking a bit much (I’m not sure if even their LTS release goes that far).
On top of that, Ubuntu could go bankrupt or get bought out, or simply enshittify (more than it already has) in that time. Expecting Ubuntu specifically to be supported on your laptop in ten years is anyone’s guess.
However, what you can be reasonably sure of is that Linux will continue to support your system, GPU and all, for a very long time. I heard a kernel developer once say that due to the kernel’s modular design, there’s support in there for stuff just one or two people in the whole world use.
As someone else has already pointed out, FOSS support for hardware generally gets better over time, and a GTX video card is ubiquitous. There’s going to be a hell of a lot of those floating around on laptops, servers, and homelabs for a lot more than ten years.
You just might not be able to stick with Ubuntu. The older the hardware, the more you might have to lean toward the more technical distros that make it easy to customise the kernel or that favour old hardware. I like Gentoo for this job, but even Ubuntu or Debian have paths to do compile your own kernel for example.
I don’t know the situation with Ubuntu, but on Arch Linux older Nvidia drivers are available as legacy driver DKMS modules working with the current kernel and tools.
So basically: Yes, this will work on a technical level.
My 1080 is supported by one of the legacy driver packages and is roughly 10 years old now.
I am pretty sure something similar exists for Ubuntu.
just to be sure is this a basic driver or does it play the games the gpu can play? (if its the latter it would be great)
It’s the normal driver in the state it was when Nvidia dropped support. @[email protected] described it very well.
