Proposal for Legacy Nvidia branch to replace 470

Objective:
To streamline NVIDIA driver maintenance in Solus by replacing the EOL 470 branch with the 580 LTS branch, providing a stable path for Maxwell (900-series) and Pascal (10-series) users through 2028. Keeping 10-series cards (like the GTX 1080 Ti) supported is important because those cards are still very capable for 1080p gaming and productivity in 2026, and losing them would alienate a significant portion of the user base.

The Strategy:
As Solus transitions the nvidia-glx-driver (Main) to the 590 series, which defaults to the Open Kernel Modules and drops support for older architectures, we should introduce nvidia-legacy-driver based on the 580 branch.

Proposed Structure:

• nvidia-glx-driver (Main): Moves to 590+ (Open Kernel Modules for Turing/RTX 20 series and newer).
• nvidia-legacy-driver (Legacy): Moves to 580 (Proprietary for Maxwell/Pascal/Volta).
• nvidia-470-glx-driver: Deprecated and removed (Users with Kepler cards encouraged to move to Nouveau/NVK).

Benefits:

• Maintenance: Consolidates all pre-RTX users into a single, slow-moving LTS branch (580) that NVIDIA will support with security patches until October 2028.
• Wayland Modernization: The 580 branch uses GBM and supports Explicit Sync, allowing older cards to finally run Wayland sessions (GNOME/Plasma) without the flickering and lag inherent in the 470/EGLStreams branch.
• Future Proofing: This creates a naming convention (-legacy) that can be reused in the future (e.g., when Turing eventually hits legacy status) without needing to rename packages for every major version drop.
• Support Gap: Provides a fallback for users whose hardware may technically support the 590 branch but encounters regressions with the new Open Kernel implementation.

In closing, not trying to step on toes and you guys are probably on this already in your strategy talks, but I figured I might as well put this out there. Please don't hesitate to close it if you feel like it as it will not hurt my feelings. I am not AI 😎

Review the nvidia-glx-driver, nvidia-legacy-driver, and nvidia-470-glx-driver package definitions first. Check how the proposed 580 and 590 branches, hardware support, and package transitions fit the repository's current structure. Done means the maintainers have an agreed migration plan and the affected packages are updated consistently.