I'm refurbishing an HP Compaq Presario F700 laptop from around 2007 that previously ran Windows Vista. It has a 1280×800 display and an Nvidia GeForce 7000M/ nForce 610M GPU. I replaced the hard drive with an SSD and tried Linux Mint XFCE, Lubuntu, and MX Linux, but all of them show a garbled display when using the nouveau driver. I'm considering Nvidia's legacy 304.137 driver, which appears to be the newest version supporting this GPU, but I'm having trouble finding a reasonably modern, beginner-friendly distribution that still provides it. Is there a practical distro or installation method to try? I'd also appreciate advice on getting a stable graphical desktop at the laptop's native 1280×800 resolution.
1 Answer
MX Linux may be worth trying with its built-in Nvidia driver tool, although it’s uncertain whether the tool still offers the very old 304.x series. If that doesn’t work, distributions with community-maintained legacy packages—such as Arch-based systems using the AUR, Fedora with RPM Fusion packages, or Void Linux—might have patched versions available. Keep in mind that Nvidia 304 drivers are intended for X11, not Wayland, so you would need to select an X11 session. Nouveau would normally be the better choice for Wayland, but the display corruption suggests it isn’t usable with this particular hardware.
I hadn’t come across MX’s Nvidia driver tool before, so I’ll investigate that first. The suggestions about patched legacy packages are helpful too—thanks!