Action Required: Ubuntu to retire Legacy NVIDIA Graphics Drivers 470

Project Discussion Kernel
1

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.

4 Likes