Bad news if you have a legacy card, like my nv34 nvidia fx5200
it is fair to assume compatibility with kernels > 3.11 is DEAD and not coming back on any distro that uses
Xorg server >1.13
https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/701493/173xx-driver-doesn-t-work-on-recent-kernels-on-several-distros/
https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers
untested patch
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/nvidia-173xx
You should be able to run nvidia 173 on:
long term supported Xubuntu 12.04 (I am on it now)
puppy linux racy [with some work]
legacy os (puppy based)