Action Required: Ubuntu to retire Legacy NVIDIA Graphics Drivers 470

Project Discussion Kernel
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NVIDIA Graphics Drivers 470 — End of Life Notice

The Ubuntu Kernel team has a commitment to build, ship and sign secure, maintainable, and supported software.

In line with this commitment, the Ubuntu Kernel Team will stop building, signing and shipping graphics driver versions that have been discontinued by NVIDIA.

In this case, we will retire the NVIDIA Graphics Drivers 470 series. The last update that NVIDIA published for this driver was June 4th, 2024.

Users will soon be automatically migrated through updates to NVIDIA Graphics Drivers 535.

Who will be affected?

Users of the NVIDIA Graphics Drivers 470. The driver is available for Noble, Jammy, Focal, and Bionic.

You can check if you are affected by running any of the following:

  • Check if you have the full driver package installed (not just meta-packages):

    dpkg -l | grep nvidia-kernel-common-470

  • Verify if you have the kernel driver loaded:

    lsmod | grep nvidia

  • List the 470.XX.YYY version of the kernel module:

    modinfo nvidia | grep ^version

  • Open Software and Updates and look under the Additional Drivers tab to see if you are using the NVIDIA driver 470 branch.

What should I do?

NVIDIA Graphics Drivers 470 is the last branch that supports Kepler generation GPUs such as GeForce GTX 7xx, some GeForce GTX 6xx, Quadro Kxx, and Tesla Kxx series.

There are two possible scenarios: hardware that is supported by newer branches, or hardware that isn’t.

Step 1: Check your hardware compatibility

  • Visit https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/drivers/ and select your GPU. Observe the recommended driver branch (e.g. 470, 535, 580).
  • Run ubuntu-drivers list to see if a newer branch is recommended.
  • Open Software and Updates → Additional Drivers and see if you have a newer choice.

Step 2a: If your hardware supports a newer branch

Select a newer branch using one of the following methods:

  • Run ubuntu-drivers install — this will automatically select the latest driver that supports your hardware.
  • Open Software and Updates → Additional Drivers and select a newer recommended option.
  • Wait for the automatic migration — we will migrate all users of nvidia-graphics-drivers-470 to nvidia-graphics-drivers-535.

Step 2b: If your hardware does not support a newer branch

If compatibility does not allow an upgrade, or the migration to nvidia-graphics-drivers-535 has broken your system, you have the following options:

Option 1 — Use the open-source Nouveau driver:

  1. Open Software and Updates → Additional Drivers and select “Using X.Org X server - Nouveau display driver from xserver-xorg-video-nouveau”.
    More information: https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/

Option 2 — Use the NVIDIA-provided legacy driver:

  1. Uninstall any packaged 470 drivers:

    sudo apt purge "*nvidia*470*" "*nvidia*470*:i386"

  2. Download the legacy 470 .run file from https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/unix/.

  3. Execute the .run file and follow the steps to complete the driver installation.

Note: The NVIDIA-provided legacy driver may break in the future with kernel updates.

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This nuked my brother’s machine, and he’s not very technical.

Why wouldn’t the update process warn the user before attempting to install the newer Nvidia driver? The older driver can’t be reinstalled since it is a transitional package to, once again, the new incompatible driver.

Many users simply use their machines for work and not games or creative activities. And older card that provides decent graphics is acceptable.

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Users will soon be automatically migrated through updates to NVIDIA Graphics Drivers 535.

Why make a transition package to something that’ll break instead of either leaving it as is, or just outright remove it so that it’ll use Nouveau?

There’s a reason they were using 470, and I’m sure they would’ve gone with a newer driver if they were able.

And had to do it on an LTS release…

Also, not all Ubuntu users read these announcements. I think the majority of “regular people” don’t, especially LTS users.

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Horrible user experience.

Broke my system unannounced because GTX770 can only run 470 and Nouveau is a no-go since my screen resolution/refresh rate is not working properly with it.

Solution was for now to use the nvidia-driver-470-server package. Got it working again.

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Horrible solution for LTS release.

As a workaround I just installed nvidia-driver-470-server using driver utility, and it works.

Before install I was switched to nouveau to investigate what happened, also was performed

sudo apt purge "*nvidia*470*" "*nvidia*470*:i386"

In addition, I installed nvidia-settings.

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I agree with other commenters that this was a ridiculous decision for an LTS release.

The unexpected change torched my machine, but fortunately I was able to boot into recovery mode and do enough “driver surgery” to get everything working again. Not everyone will have that ability or wherewithal, leaving them with a major headache they may not be able to solve.

As for the communication, I found this post only after the fact while trying to figure out why my graphics drivers were suddenly not working.

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A whole lot of headaches could’ve been avoided if they moved to this