NVIDIA have just released a new version of the 580.xx driver – 580.126.09 – and details etc. are here:  https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/details/261243/
This now compiles/loads/runs OK with Kernel 6.19 (tested with 6.19-rc5):

…………………….
CC [M] .module-common.o
LD [M] nvidia.ko
CC [M] nvidia-uvm.mod.o
LD [M] nvidia-uvm.ko
CC [M] nvidia-modeset.mod.o
LD [M] nvidia-modeset.ko
CC [M] nvidia-drm.mod.o
LD [M] nvidia-drm.ko
CC [M] nvidia-peermem.mod.o
LD [M] nvidia-peermem.ko
make[2]: Leaving directory ‘/home/rgadsdon/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-580.126.09/kernel’
make[1]: Leaving directory ‘/usr/src/linux-6.19-rc5’

# nvidia-smi
Wed Jan 14 00:38:56 2026
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 580.126.09 Driver Version: 580.126.09 CUDA Version: 13.0                     |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU Name Persistence-M      | Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC                      |
| Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap | Memory-Usage  | GPU-Util Compute M.                       |
|                             |               | MIG M.                                    |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
| 0 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M Off | 00000000:01:00.0 On | N/A                               |
| N/A 37C P0 25W / 1000W        | 16MiB / 8192MiB     | 0% Default                        |
|                               |                     | N/A                               |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+

So, GTX cards are still supported – for the time being…   During previous testing, I had noticed that warning/error messages were already referring to the 580 series of drivers as ‘legacy’…
It should be noted that the older 470 series ‘legacy’ driver was last updated in June 2024…     I have also found the old Nouveau driver to be of unpredictable quality, and the new Nova driver does not support the ‘old’ GTX cards..
I have moved almost all my GTX systems to RTX now, apart from the HP8770W which still has a GTX980M…   Hardware compatibility is an issue here, but there do seem to be some MXM 3.0b RTX3000 cards available, but – so far – untested…?   It might well be less of a problem to just get a newer RTX-equipped laptop, but I see this as a challenge…

Robert Gadsdon.   January 13th 2026..