What exactly does not supported mean?

Graphics / Linux Linux
1

I recently was upgrading and built kernel 5.2.6 and NVidia driver 430.40 for my laptop, which has a GeForce GTX 765M.

$ /sbin/lspci | grep NVIDIA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK106M [GeForce GTX 765M] (rev a1)

$ /sbin/lspci -n | grep 01:00.0
01:00.0 0300: 10de:11e2 (rev a1)

Only after a few days of flawless performance, did I notice that GTX 765M is no longer listed as supported in Nvidia driver 430.40. It obviously works, so what does “not supported” really mean?

$ primusrun glxinfo | grep OpenGL
OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce GTX 765M/PCIe/SSE2
OpenGL core profile version string: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 430.40
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 4.60 NVIDIA
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile
OpenGL core profile extensions:
OpenGL version string: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 430.40
OpenGL shading language version string: 4.60 NVIDIA

2

Kepler mobile chips like yours are actually no longer supported…in the Windows driver. So with Linux, you can now regard them as undead, probably a new legacy driver coming in 01/2020 retiring Kepler gpus on Linux in whole.