So I am using a mac from 2009 with elementaryos installed, and I installed nvidia 340 drivers for my 9400m gpu. It has been extreamly slow, so are there any other 3rd party drivers that have not been abandoned?

There is nouveau (https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/) but my experience with it was not a happy one, I am sticking with proprietary nvidia drivers

1 members found this post helpful.

How do I install it? I cannot find any guides. I tried using https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/UbuntuPackages.html this guide but it seemed very complicated and hard to follow. I don't want to wreck my computer, but I have to replace the drivers since Nvidia is not updating the 340 drivers anymore.

I am afraid I cannot help you here, for me it was the other way around: ubuntu decided that pure FOSS nouveau is better for me than nasty proprietary nvidia stuff, upon which my system started freezing randomly and I had to figure out how to get rid of it.

There is generic "modestting" driver which works pretty well. However, before resorting to modesetting I'd verify nvidia install was successful and it actually is working, Xorg initialization is in its log, I would look at that log if I were you.

I installed my drivers by going to the elementaryOS app store and clicking "install nvidia 340 drivers"...

Well, it is very possible the install succeeded. But since you are not happy with it I suggest verifying it actually works as intended.

I mean, my graphics card is 10x less strong than a modern igpu. Also Nvidia 340 has stopped being supported by nvidia and is no longer actively developed. That is why I want to install a 3rd party driver.

Your hardware is old, You cannot install newer distros, the GPU is stuck with a no-longer-supported driver. Why not just freeze everything on the OS and use it as-is until something breaks.

You will be unable to get anything newer as a driver for that card, and has already been said, the nouveau driver is not really reliable.

With that said, I suspect the nouveau driver is already installed and just not used.

When booting, from the grub menu hit e and read the kernel command line. If it has something like nouveau.blacklist=1 then the nouveau driver is already installed and can be activated by disabling or uninstalling the nvidia driver. To test it before uninstalling the other driver a simple change of that command line to remove the nouveau.blacklist=1 and add nvidia.blacklist=1 as well as to remove any other nvidia parts on that line, which may include nvidia.modeset=1 and change them to activate the nouveau.modeset=1 instead.

HTH

1 members found this post helpful.

In old times when correct driver failed to load and Xorg fell back to generic VGA it was noticeable, it was limited to 800x600 if I remember correctly. Nowadays generic driver offers better resolutions and users have no clue correct driver is not in use. Same here, did OP check if the driver he thinks is loaded actually is in use? Nope. My laptop is rather old and also has an outdated nVidia card. Works fine with nouveau and modesetting, no lagging, everything is snappy. Sure, nouveau cannot do all the acceleration the proprietary driver can, but there is no need for 3D acceleration in my case.

Using the modesetting DDX driver, I have NVidia GPUs working just fine with older GeForces than your 9400. The modesetting requires the nouveau kernel driver, so any NVidia 340 driver remnants must be purged for it to work. That includes no NVidia-generated /etc/xorg.conf, no nouveau blacklisting, and nothing containing string modeset on the linu lines in Grub.

What you can do is downgrading your distro to a kernel version which is supported by the old proprietary driver. Maybe it feels like your graphics are very slow when you are used to work with a modern GPU.
I did this for my old desktop machine but now have problems installing, compile and use actual software. That's a vicious circle.

1 members found this post helpful.