Staying updated on hardware incompatible with nvidia-open

[lparolari]

Hello everyone,

In early 2025, I installed bluefin-dx-nvidia on my laptop and I have been using it for work, home, and gaming ever since.
Because it worked so well, I stopped paying attention to updates and news (I took the "near-zero maintenance" advice quite seriously 😄).

In the past weeks I noticed I was only receiving Homebrew and Flatpak updates, but not distro updates. bootc status reveals I’ve been stuck on version 42.20251024.1 since October 2025. Other users had the same issue as well (e.g., https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/bluefin-iso-for-nvidia-is-obsolete/7850) and I discovered that bluefin-dx-nvidia has been deprecated due to the transition to NVIDIA open-source drivers.

I have learned (#3669, #3081) that the solution is to switch to bluefin-dx-nvidia-open.

However, I read that these new drivers primarily support recent hardware while my card is an NVIDIA GeForce MX150 (prob. Pascal architecture) from 2017.

I decided to give them a go anyway. I switched to the new image with

bootc switch ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin-dx-nvidia-open:stable --enforce-container-sigpolicy

but, as expected, the card was not being detected (nvidia-smi returns an error).

My question then is: what is the best way to continue receiving bluefin-dx:stable updates while keeping the proprietary drivers that support my card? I imagine I could create a custom build, but I'd prefer a simpler solution if one exists.

Is it possible (or advisable) to handle this via layers by installing the proprietary drivers on top of the standard bluefin-dx image? If I go this route, what kind of issues should I expect?

Thanks for the help!

[repires]

If you can consider using kde, there is a custom image based on aurora that is keeping the legacy drivers support if you dont need gaming setup.

https://www.kompassos.nl/

[lparolari]

I would like to stay on Gnome if possible.

I took a look at KompassOS which also uses bluebuild but I could not figure out where the proprietary drivers are installed.

They build 3 images:

• kompassos-dx-hwe, which on the website is identified as the one for older nvidia cards, actually uses the ublue-os/aurora-dx as base image. I believe that the compatibility with older cards is intended with the nouveau driver as @sebjag suggested below;
• recipes/recipe-dx-hwe-nvidia.yml uses ublue-os/aurora-dx-nvidia-open as base image, so it wont work for me;
• kompassos-dx-surface (not relevant)

With "legacy drivers support" do you mean the proprietary drivers?

[repires]

You can also consider using bluebuild

[sebjag]

Do you need the proprietary nvidia driver, or are you just interested in staying updated?
You can just switch to bluefin-dx:stable which has the in-kernel nouveau driver for older GPUs.

[lparolari]

I mostly use my laptop for work but I do some occasional gaming, so I believe I require the proprietary driver for performance (seems like nouveau is usually not good for gaming).

I saw that there is also a bazzite image that might fit my use case as it includes proprietary drivers: https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite-dx/pkgs/container/bazzite-dx-nvidia-gnome.

In general, it seems that my current bluefin-dx-nvidia should be very close to bazzite-dx-nvidia-gnome (https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/bazzite-vs-bluefin/1686, https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/overview-of-exact-differences-between-the-aurora-bluefin-bazzite/10715/2) except from the fact that bazzite-dx-nvidia-gnome is constantly updated.

One user was highlighting highlighting some differences on bazzite, e.g., autostart for steam, frequent updates and regressions on rollbacks (https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/aurora-or-bazzite/3144). Not sure if there is something else to keep in mind.

What do you think?

[sebjag]

seems like nouveau is usually not good for gaming

That article is from 2019. In my opinion, the only way to know how well nouveau works for the games you play is to rebase to bluefin-dx:stable and try it. For regular desktop use that image should work fine. That said, you will probably have better success with games if you rebase to bazzite-dx-nvidia-gnome

bazzite-dx-nvidia-gnome is constantly updated

The release process has improved a lot recently, so I wouldn't worry too much. It looks like bazzite-dx-nvidia-gnome:stable is built weekly now, same as bluefin.

[lparolari]

Thanks! I will follow your advice and give bluefin-dx:stable a try. If it doesn't work, I will switch to bazzite-dx-nvidia-gnome:stable.

[castrojo]

Did it work? It'd be nice to know so we can tell people with older hardware.

[lparolari]

Unfortunately it did not work with bluefin-dx.

I switched to bluefin-dx and tried to launch a game from steam with the
following command:

DRI_PRIME=1 %command%

The game opened but it was laggy and weirdly pixelated.

As soon as I have a bit more time I will try bazzite and let you know.

[starfreck]

Is there any chance that bluefin-dx-nvidia images will be available again?

I am facing the same issue. My laptop has hybrid graphics (Intel Iris + NVIDIA GeForce MX 330).

[inffy]

no, those are not supported anymore

[lparolari]

In the end, I tried switching to bazzite-dx-nvidia-gnome:stable (version 43.20260420) but nvidia-smi was showing an error so I had to rollback to bluefin-dx-nvidia:stable.

I don't know if this is a bug or what but actually I could not rollback with bootc rollback because both entries in GRUB were pointing to the new bazzite install. I had to manually run bootc switch bazzite-dx-nvidia-gnome:stable. Not an issue, of course, but I was not expecting to see the rollback image overwritten by bazzite.

So, do you have any advises on how to keep my system updated while keeping compatibility with older hardware? At least, I would like to get security updates.

[inffy]

Bazzite-dx doesn't support the old nvidia drivers, its also nvidia-open only.

You can rebase to the default bazzite-gnome-nvidia image