NVIDIA GPU users, attention please! (Dec-2025)

Important notifications
41

Bad time to find out my timeshift snapshots have not been getting created since Dec. 13 due to some corruption with exclude/include lists. Found this out when trying to manually create a snapshot before replacing my Nvidia drivers, and the snapshot failed.

While the path to replacement is clear, I’d like to have me a failsafe. Now I gotta wait to create a new snapshot that needs to capture everything from scratch. Would be done in a few seconds if I was on BTRFS, but with EXT4 on a system running for 3 years? :roll_eyes:

42

I intentionally updated to show the 590xx version doesn’t work on the GTX1060 and then installed all the required 580xx from the AUR. No issue here!

3 Likes
43

I did this one: I had to install nvidia-580xx-settings manually after wards-it failed during the first attempt.

yay -S nvidia-580xx-dkms nvidia-580xx-utils nvidia-580xx-settings lib32-nvidia-580xx-utils

Whats weird is my system as defaulting to kernel 6.12 afterwards

  • I chose to boot into 6.19 instead and am in the process of doing the OS full upgrade and it did not include the NVIDIA driver.
  • I am scared to reboot
  • why do I do these things to myself?

in for penny I guess.

44

That seems normal. If you had installed the 580xx drivers from AUR you would have already removed the nvidia driver so it would not be part of your update.

45

https://docs.mesa3d.org/drivers/nvk.html NVK is a Vulkan driver for NVIDIA GPUs. :wink:

difference is somehow sort of this:

Nouveau modesetting from kernel:

  • Performance is limited
  • Many modern GPU features are missing
  • Power management and newer Vulkan features are weak or absent.

Nouveau NVK:

  • same kernel driver, but with a modern Vulkan renderer
  • Much better correctness and performance possibilities.

Still early development state and Work in Progress.

1 Like
46

Thank you so much. Wow, this world keeps telling me to upgrade my GPU. Fine…. fine, it’s about time.

(This is the fifth time my system gets bricked for being on on the GTX 10xx series)

3 Likes
47

I have heard of Vulcan, but pretty much only in the gaming context, which is something I don’t do other than the occasional very simple scroll shooter so I can mindlessly just KILL :angry: , KILL :enraged_face: , KILLLLLLLLLLL :face_with_symbols_on_mouth: alien scum!!:zany_face:

I’m sure if I tried running one of the more modern flagship games with my 1050, it would go up in flames!:open_mouth: It would also leave me without my main workstation, because my Ryzen 7 5700X is not an APU, just a PCU, and the only other GPU I have is a much older AGP one I cannot put in any of my PC’s but the Athlon one it’s in.:cry:

On the other hand, if it’s not only a Steam :face_with_steam_from_nose: , Vulcan :vulcan_salute: … thing, and has any advantages over, or in addition to Nouveau for other applications, like graphics editors, FreeCad, Kdenlive… than I’m interested.:thinking:

48

Vulkan is not only a gaming thing. Blender and other graphics apps can use it.
Turn that interest right back on.

1 Like
49

Cool :smiling_face_with_sunglasses: ,and thanks :hugs: ddnn (whatever that stands for) ! Now I have to dive in and figure out what all I need to install and configure, without causing any problems and get the best use of it all.

Any help and advice is greatly appreciated.

50

No problem. It’s all been said above. Pretty straight-forward process.

51

DUH!:woozy_face: I keep forgetting to look right where I already am when in a thread on the topic, instead of running off to look elsewhere!

Me so silly!:zany_face:

1 Like
52

EndeavourOS Ganymede + NVIDIA: Xfce/X11 flicker after driver transition (fixed) FWIW

After upgrading to EndeavourOS Ganymede, my NVIDIA stack got caught in the driver transition (Arch moving to the nvidia-open* packages). On my RTX 2060 12GB (Turing), I initially ended up with severe window flicker / compositor-related glitches under Xfce on X11.

Disabling the Xfce compositor immediately improved stability.

What I tried (worked):

Updated to the current repo driver (590.x on my system now) so all NVIDIA packages are consistent again (nvidia-open-dkms, nvidia-utils, lib32-nvidia-utils all same series).

Then re-enabled compositor safely by setting Xfce vblank mode to xpresent:

xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/vblank_mode -s xpresent
xfwm4 --replace &

After moving to 590 and using xpresent, the compositor appears stable again. Gaming was also fine with compositor disabled (acceptable workaround while troubleshooting).

1 Like
53

just for your info
there is no flicking windows with mate , Xfce have not changed in december , only driver nvidia and they have introduced many bug in the serie 119 version.

version 105 was working , and they have not revert for 580-dkms , with your 20xx video card you can use 590 but they have not fixed trouble on flicking windows.

asking on other ( this is no us , this is compositor xfce ) is not a good future for theses drivers series , and remember how much nvidia have in money and what team dev Xfce have in the money.

54

nvidia-inst is currently not very useful because of the changes in Nvidia packages. But it will be modified to support the existing situation. This will happen likely after the Christmas holidays.

Note that nvidia-inst does not support AUR packages, so for GPUs older than the Turing family it will choose the nouveau kernel driver.

So it is up to the user to install packages from the AUR.
There’s also nvidia-all github site that may be helpful in such cases.

2 Likes
55

I found it funny how the official Arch Linux news announcement advises people to switch to a AUR PKBUILD version of the driver.

https://archlinux.org/news/nvidia-590-driver-drops-pascal-support-main-packages-switch-to-open-kernel-modules

While they also actually state on the AUR archwiki page that the AUR is not supported and to use at your own risk.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_User_Repositor

AUR packages are user-produced content. These PKGBUILDs are completely unofficial and have not been thoroughly vetted. Any use of the provided files is at your own risk.

:rofl:

56

It is ironic, but technically, all of Linux is a use at your own risk disclaimer, unless you’re using Red Hat or some other paid distro. :wink:

57

Yeah but it’s more about that Arch Linux only officially supports the packages from their own repos but than do the exact opposite with this and then advise to use an AUR PKGBUILD. It’s more about that than about using a corporate supported distribution.

58

I know lol. Was just making an additional point.

1 Like
59

This did it for me too. Thanks!

60

I did exactly what you said and it worked perfectly on my GTX 1050 Ti. I’m using a laptop with hybrid Intel + NVIDIA graphics. Thanks!