I'm refurbishing an HP Compaq Presario F700 laptop from around 2007. It has a 1280×800 display and an Nvidia GeForce 7000M/nForce 610M GPU. I replaced the original hard drive with an SSD and tried Linux Mint XFCE, Lubuntu, and MX Linux, but each system shows garbled graphics when using the nouveau driver. After troubleshooting, it seems nouveau may simply be incompatible with this hardware. The final proprietary Nvidia driver supporting this GPU appears to be version 304.137. Is there a reasonably modern, user-friendly Linux distribution that still makes installing this driver practical? I'd also appreciate advice on getting a stable system with the correct 1280×800 resolution. I understand that the proprietary driver would require an X11 session rather than Wayland.
1 Answer
MX Linux may be worth trying with its built-in Nvidia driver utility, though it's uncertain whether the tool still provides the very old 304.xx series. If that doesn't work, distributions with community-maintained legacy packages could be options: Arch-based systems may have patched versions in the AUR, Fedora may have older packages through RPM Fusion, and Void Linux might also have suitable legacy drivers. With Nvidia 304.137, plan on using X11, since that driver predates Wayland support.
I hadn't come across MX's Nvidia driver utility before. I'll check whether it offers the 304.xx driver, and I'll also investigate the other options.