Install Ubuntu on a PC with Old Nvidia GPU (Maxwell)

Solution

Just buy a new Nvidia 40-series GPU or switch to AMD if you don't need the CUDA cores. Otherwise, you are very likely to end up extremely pissed off trying to configure the Nvidia drivers that come with Linux distros, which do not support older Nvidia GPUs.

Background

I had a bunch of old PC hardware sitting in my closet, so I figured, why not build an Ubuntu rig? I really wanted to isolate my main gaming PC from my other tasks. Since Ubuntu is free, lightweight, and highly compatible, it was exactly what I needed.

PC Hardware List

CPU: Ryzen 3700X
Motherboard: ASUS X570 TUF WiFi
GPU: NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti ASUS 2FAN <- This is the exact model featured in the game Escape from Tarkov
RAM: Trident Z DDR4 3200MHz (8GB x 4)

Process

Assemble all of your components. Make sure everything is seated tightly, check power connections, etc.
Prepare the installation media, usually a USB stick. You can download the Ubuntu distro's .iso file and prepare the installation drive using Rufus.
- Inside Rufus, select your USB stick, and click SELECT to choose your downloaded .iso file.
- Set Partition scheme to MBR, and leave the rest as is.
- Click Start and use the default options when prompted.
Insert your USB stick into the rig and boot. Press the DEL or F2 key repeatedly to enter the BIOS. On ASUS motherboards, press F8 to choose the boot drive. Select your USB stick as the boot drive. This should bring up the GRUB menu.
With modern Linux kernels, the default "Try or Install Ubuntu" option will most likely fail and boot to a black screen due to driver incompatibility. To resolve this, choose the option that has "safe graphics" mode. It will boot you with a basic display driver.
Proceed with the installation. Make sure to check Install third-party software for graphics and Wi-Fi hardware (which includes proprietary drivers). Although the kernel will detect your NVIDIA GPU and install drivers for it, those drivers will probably not work out of the box.
After installation, log in and run the following in the terminal:
```
sudo apt update
nvidia-smi
```
This should output a text box listing the active NVIDIA drivers—most likely nvidia-driver-550 if you are on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, or nvidia-driver-535 if you are on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. These drivers might work, but they are genuinely unstable in my experience. So you will likely have to force nvidia-driver-470 on these distros.
If you ask an AI for help, it will most likely tell you to run:
```
sudo apt purge '*nvidia*'
sudo apt autoremove && sudo apt autoclean
...
sudo apt install nvidia-driver-470
```
I can confirm that this approach does not work at all. Instead, you will have to set up APT pinning to strictly enforce a driver release. This Reddit post here provides a very detailed how-to. Although written for Debian, the process is mostly the same for Ubuntu.

But seriously, it wouldn't hurt to just drop in a 9060XT like I did. The amount of time spent trying to configure the proprietary drivers and praying the system won't break simply isn't worth it. As of writing this article (Jun 28, 2026, 01:41 HKT), my newly installed 9060XT is working exactly as expected.

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