NVIDIA Retiring Their Pre-Fermi "340 Series" Legacy Linux Graphics Driver

NVIDIA has sent out word that they no longer plan to issue anymore driver updates for their 340 series Linux legacy branch.

This Linux 340 legacy driver series has provided extended support for the G8x, G9x, and GT2xx GPUs. Or in other words, the GeForce 8 series through GeForce 300 series. Moving forward though they will still be maintaining the NVIDIA 390 driver series that is their legacy driver for the Fermi GPUs.

The GeForce 8 series was introduced all the way back in 2006 and thus nearly a decade and a half later it's time to phase out the software support. The GeForce 200 series is even 11+ years old and thus time for its retirement.

The final 340 Linux driver does have X.Org Server 1.20 and Linux 5.4 kernel compatibility so it should be good enough for running on existing Linux distributions for some time. There is also the open-source Nouveau driver that offers support for these graphics cards over a decade old.

In NVIDIA's updated bulletin they commit to maintaining the 390 driver series for Fermi through the end of 2022.