Hello, comrades. I come to you seeking help. Recently, my young sister decides she would like to install Linux. Good brother that I am, I want to help her.

Here’s the kicker. Her PC has a GTX 770. The newest driver for such a card is #470 according to Ubuntu-derived systems. Alas, almost every “normal person” distro uses Wayland now, and Wayland doesn’t support such an old driver. I am not going to install Arch on a 10-year-old’s PC, btw.

What are some good distros I can install on her PC so that neither I nor her have to have a headache getting Wayland out and X11 in?

Thank you, friends.

    • rambling_lunaticOPEnglish
      4·
      9 months ago

      I think that that is what I’ll go with. When I was just moving from Windows it was what I used too.

      Thank you.

  • Max-P@lemmy.max-p.meEnglish
    6·
    9 months ago

    That’s definitely one of the problems with closed source drivers that doesn’t get talked about enough. Having a card that NVIDIA considers EOL on Linux basically turns them to e-waste.

    They’re mostly still compatible with Xorg because thankfully X11 development has basically been abandoned for the last decade so the drivers still sort of works. But at this point my GTX 460M which is still perfectly capable for most things is such a chore I wish that this laptop came with Intel HD integrated graphics. Kernel driver patches, X11 ABI patches, configurations to ignore versions of some things and the instability that ensues.

    If it’s a desktop honestly I’d just replace the 770 with an equivalent AMD card, it’s not worth the effort. At least on the AMD side, cards from 20 years ago still gets open-source driver updates.

  • iluminae@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    9 months ago

    I noticed fedora comes with OOTB X11 DEs for gnome shell and legacy - it’s just not the first choice in the list.

    • _cnt0English
      4·
      9 months ago

      There is the plan to remove the X11 gnome session in a coming release. Not sure if it is the next and as far as I know, this will not affect KDE (for now).

  • BCsven@lemmy.caEnglish
    4·
    9 months ago

    OpenSUSE Leap or Tumbleweed have nVidia drivers right from nvidias own repo. it still works with my 2013 ish K2000 CAD card

  • Telodzrum@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    9 months ago

    Alas, almost every “normal person” distro uses Wayland now

    It’s your computer. Put a different DE or just a different compositor on it. They all still work fine with X.

    • rambling_lunaticOPEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      Fair enough. That being said, I learned of this incompatibility after I installed a driver and messed things up. I think it would be faster to install a distro that works fine out of the box instead of reinstalling that same distro and wasting more of my sister’s time.

      Cheers!

      • Telodzrum@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        Fair enough, I know Manjaro and EndeavorOS both ship with KDE and the option to use X11 or Wayland. I’d assume Debian defaults to X11.

    • AVincentInSpace@pawb.socialEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      Well yes, but you see, if I install a distro that uses X11 out of the box, rather than installing a distro that comes with Wayland and then installing X11 on top of it, then someone other than me is responsible when my setup breaks due to a software update. This is especially valuable on a relative’s computer where I won’t always be around to provide tech support.

  • AVincentInSpace@pawb.socialEnglish
    2·
    9 months ago

    Does Wayland/that card work with Nouveau drivers? I haven’t played with them in a long time, primarily due to their performance, but if your sister is still rocking a GTX 770, performance is likely not her primary concern