My funtoo Cinnamon install on an older machine is blocked.

The Cinnamon mix-in seems to require gfxcard-nvidia, which is incompatible with the gfxcard-nvidia-legacy mix-in since it seems to mask (automagically?) the nvidia-kernel-modules and/or nvidia-drivers at version 340.xx on this particular machine. Which is fine considering the hardware in question (nvidia 320m), but portage reports it is incompatible with later kernel sources (which I would guess are required to run cinnamon properly). Furthermore, even version 390.xx doesn't seem to be able to build with the latest (debian) kernel sources via portage.

With the current incompatibility between the Cinnamon mix-in and the gfxcard-nouveau mix-in, this restricts older nvidia hardware to running software (cpu) rendering/compositing/whatever it is that Cinnamon/gnome does.

I'd just as soon run gnome or xfce using nouveau or somesuch and not file a bug report regarding this, if it wasn't for cinnamon running on the same old graphics hardware on linux mint. This makes me think that there's some improvement to be had here. I vaguely recall reading that the Cinnamon stage wasn't quite ready, but I couldn't find that at funtoo.org again when last I looked.

Is there a proper way of setting up older hardware to run these desktop managers, specifically cinnamon? Linux mint was able to get hardware acceleration, but I didn't bother to dig into why before I excitedly removed it in favor of funtoo. I just assumed it would work.

I hope this report isn't bothersome or a waste of someone's time, and I apologize in advance if it turns out to be so.