Legacy releases.. 390. *grumble*

Guess who just tried to install 396.24 and found out that:

a) 390.X is now a legacy release not a long-term
b) that their graphics card (NVS 5200M) is now considered legacy.

Would have been nice if the README for 396 didn’t just include the new cards
supported, but also mentioned the list of cards that had been dropped.

lol
The README in the driver package for 396.18 actually contained that list. Did they remove it with 396.24? At least they now changed the list of supported devices on their website which contained unsupported devices previously.

It is mentioned here and your card is listed as supported by 390.xx at most: What's a legacy driver? | NVIDIA

You’re right though, other places don’t mention 390.x being legacy:
https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/533434/linux/current-graphics-driver-releases/
http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3142

So they’re just slow to update all the documentation.

Sorry the situation is a little confusing. Our support strategy goes something like this:

  • Short-lived branches typically get one or two official releases before we move on. This is where new features and support for the latest products first show up.
  • Long-lived branches (after the first release or two) get bug fixes and new kernel & X server support for supported products, but usually not new features.
  • Legacy branches get new kernel & X server support for legacy products only. I.e. we aren't backporting fixes for Fermi-based GPUs to the release 340 series since that one is the legacy branch for the Tesla architecture.

390.* is still the current long-lived branch, so it’s still getting releases supporting Fermi and newer GPUs. Once there’s a new long-lived branch that supersedes it, 390 will transition to legacy support where it will only get fixes that are relevant to Fermi. Does that help clear things up?

As for 396.18, the README lists the NVS 5200M in a section that starts with this heading:

Maybe it’s confusing to have the legacy tables in the same page as the list of supported products? Would it help to split the lists into separate HTML files?

That doesn’t help when I’m looking at 396.24…

What exactly bit me: The README here: Linux x64 (AMD64/EM64T) Display Driver | 396.24 | Linux 64-bit | NVIDIA

Had a nice blurb that said:

Added support for the following GPUs:
GeForce GTX 1050 with Max-Q Design
Quadro P3200
Quadro P4200

But no mention that 390 was being split off - which meant I didn’t notice Unix graphics feature deprecation schedule - Linux - NVIDIA Developer Forums

I think the primary disconnect was that the 396.18 announcement listed it, but 396.24 didn’t - which causes a problem for anybody who doesn’t look at every single announcement. Going forward, you probably should include a reminder for the first 3-6 months of a series…

(Fortunately, once I found out about the split, I got 390.59 running just fine on a next-20180517 kernel… :)