I can get my Precision 7710 workstation with Nvidia 3000M to work with Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon and Nvidia drivers.

That's the good news.

Unfortunately, the 3.* Linux kernel installed with Mint can't talk to the Intel wireless 8260 card.   Upgrading to a 4.* kernel fixed that problem, but I could only use the 4.* kernel with the open source video driver.  Picking the Nvidia driver crashed Cinnamon.

I installed Ubuntu 14.04, and that works ... but I prefer Mint, and don't want to give up yet.

Can anyone suggest a way of getting the Nvidia driver to work with a 4.* kernel in Linux Mint?  I don't have to use Cinnamon, could try a different Mint flavor.