Nouveau graphics not working with Geforce 8200M

[rare dome]

And I can't install the proprietary graphics because they don't work on the modern linux kernel.

the mouse cursor displays fine though

This is Lubuntu. I tried Mint, but it just kept freezing on boot.

[wise pulsar]

could somehow try a recent kernel

you could try a distro like arch to see if an update fixes it

[lofty ledge]

Here I am, I had a problem like this too, I know how I could help you

[jolly quartz]

Install kernel 3.2.

[lofty ledge]

We had the same version for the proprietary drivers for our Nvidia graphics cards, unfortunately there are two solutions

[lofty ledge]

You need to check with more distros which one works best with the open source drivers noveau , If none of these work, you are forced to use an old version of Linux to get the drivers to work or you have to reinstall Windows, there aren't many alternatives.

I had the same problem, I fiddled with it for 3 months but the only options were these

[rare dome]

I've already tried Mint, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Fedora, Alpine, MX Linux, DSL, and Tiny Core Linux.
Of all of those, Tiny Core Linux is the only one that worked fine. But it's pretty unmaintained and there's very few apps that work with it.
The laptop I have is a Windows Vista laptop and I don't want to be using Windows Vista in 2025.
So I guess I'll try using a 3.2 kernel like the guy above said. But I imagine there's a lot of security patches that haven't been ported back to such an old kernel. Probably at least still more secure than Vista though.
I did figure out that Lubuntu will boot fine in recovery mode. Do you think a valid solution is just updating my grub configuration to boot in recovery mode by default?

[rare dome]

Well I tried using ubuntu 12 that has the 3.2 kernel, but can't update anything because I get

Failed to fetch http://archive.buntu.com/ubuntu/dists/precise 404 not found
The same error appears even after following the instructions here
https://smyl.es/how-to-fix-ubuntudebian-apt-get-404-not-found-package-repository-errors-saucy-raring-quantal-oneiric-natty/

So maybe just making it run in recovery mode by default is the best solution?

[lofty ledge]

Why don't you try new different distros in live mode to see if your graphics card works? As I said I had a graphics card like yours with the Same version of proprietary drivers and some distros helped a lot to make it work well with the noveau

[rare dome]

I've already tried 9, plus different versions of Ubuntu. Do you really think trying a 10th linux distro will help?

[lofty ledge]

If you tell me like that, no

[lofty ledge]

The only thing you can do is go back to Windows or patch for your kernel or Nvidia drivers every time

I've been there too @rare dome For 6 months I searched for a solution, in the end I bought a new PC and for the old one I reinstalled Windows and I gave it to my best friend, you see what to do

[rare dome]

oh well. I guess I'll just keep Lubuntu with my grub hack to make it boot in recovery mode by default. It's not elegant, and there's probably other reasons to not do that, but it works and lets me run a modern OS on the thing.

[lofty ledge]

@rare dome The important thing is that you are happy with your setup, one thing that came to mind is that if you can't use the GPU, you can always use the CPU as a graphics card, it will be slow but functional, It's not bad in my opinion

If you want I'll explain how to do it