Nvidia-inst wants to replace already installed nvidia

General system Newbie
1

Hi there, so as the title says.

I returned to the world of arch yet again yaaaaay :blush:

So, when I installed eos on my testing machine, I booted the installer into NVIDIA mode. Installation went smoothly. Now I’m standing here post-install, and out of curiosity, I typed nvidia-inst to see what it would want to do, and this is the result:

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I’m so confused right now, and either I’m missing out something, or is it really wants to replace the nvidia with nvidia-dkms, which I constantly keep failing to understand the difference between the two :smiley: As you can see, from the inxi -Gaz and pacman -Qs nvidia outputs, nvidia drivers are already installed, and I guess thats because I was booted into Nvidia mode during the EOS installation procedure, but correct me if I’m wrong.

So, should I just let nvidia-inst run and complete the “reinstall” of nvidia drivers now, letting it replace the already installed one with the *-dkms one?

I tried my best to read and understand the arch wiki numerous of times, but I just can’t understand what DKMS is.. why is it good, or why is it not good, should I even care etc-etc.. Can anyone explain this dkms thing to me, just as if I was a 5year old pls?

Also this below image, eos-update, I’m a bit confused, by the underlined line. So if I’m getting it right, when I have a nvidia-dkms driver installed, then the eos-update --nvidia would technically be ineffective? Whats the good practice of updating nvidia-drivers then? Simply by running yay and letting it do its thing?

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Sorry for the lot of questions, I just want to do things right, and I used eos/arch based long ago, and things changed alot since then.

Thanx in advance

2

nvidia is the modules for linux kernel.

nvidia-dkms should in theory work with any kernel that is compatible.

In general, life will be better to use the nvidia and/or nvidia-lts if you use only linux and/or linux-lts. If you use other kernels, then switch to nvidia-dkms

dkms modules consume memory, resources and time to build during the update process and you always are at risk of incompatibility.

In your case, you may not need to make any changes. You don’t need to run nvidia-inst if you already have the drivers installed.

2 Likes
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Yes. However, the --nvidia option isn’t for updating the drivers, it does additional checks before updating. Both yay and eos-update will update the nvidia drivers if an update is available.

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Thank you @dalto, and deeply in my heart, I was hoping to get the answers specifically from you, because I remember you helped me a lot back then :slight_smile: So I’m happy that you’re still here :3

By the way, I have the default kernel: 6.14.3-arch1-1, so the “regular” nvidia is ok if I’m not mistaken, aye?

so if I’m getting it right, if I would use some custom kernel like, cachy’s kernels, then dkms variant would be the one to be preferred correct?

Nice good to know, thank you :heart:

And thanks for the quick reply and followup reply too :3

5

Yes, correct.

Yes.

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Something useful to know will be, I have found that using the normal “nvidia” driver package causes segfaults and crashdumps when exiting a Steam game. Having switched to nvidia-dkms seems to have solved that problem for me. Only difference is I wasn’t use the nvidia driver package but nvidia-open driver package, since I switched to nvidia-open-dkms I haven’t had segfaults anymore when exiting a Steam game.

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Thanks for sharing your experiences, much appreciated. I’m not gonna lie, but I’m already thinking about simply switching over to dkms, it seems more straightforward + in the future if I tend to use custom kernels, it’s gonna be already there, making transition easier.

And iirc, back when I used eos like, 1year ago, nvidia-dkms was the only option, and worked like a dream. No idea, when this regular nvidia package got release, and why it is the one that gets installed by default with eos, and why nvidia-inst wants to replace it to dkms instead, but it does want to replace it and I guess there’s a good reason behind it, for me it feels a bit more straightforward idk :person_shrugging:

But all these confusing nvidia packages tho… nvidia, nvidia-dkms, nvidia-open, nvidia-open-dkms eeeh :confounded_face: So, thank you Nvidia /s

8

nvidia-open is the open-source nvidia module, the Nvidia RTX 5000 series only works now with the nvidia-open driver on Linux. Just use the nvidia-dkms since you don’t seem to be using a 5000 series.

9

nvidia itself has been around a long time. A while back EOS started installing nvidia by default because building the dkms modules during the install was too resource intensive for some hardware configs.

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Yes yes, I heard the open works from Turing and up. My testing dummy machine is only K620 and even my main pc is only GTX 1050 Ti so yea :3

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Ooooh so that’s why. Now that makes sense, thank you for popping that questionmark out my/our heads :3

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I’m getting into Nvidia for the first time. And after reading through the forum and checking the Arch WIKI, newer Nvidia cards are transitioning to nvidia-open ONLY.

13

Yupp, thats their long term plans, since 1660 series afaik. When I read about it back then, I was happy and sad at the same time.. Not for long though, I’m already planning of switching to pure AMD build soon enough, and finally I can end this dueling parade with Nvidia once and for all.

14

We’ll have to see how my Nvidia experiment goes. My GPU is on the newer side (Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti). I’ll be using nvidia-open-dkms once I install it tomorrow. Crossing fingers! :smiley:

Sorry, didn’t mean to hijack the thread.

15

Glhf :smiley:

nono its totally fine, you didn’t, I already marked the solution and got all the answers I wanted, so its chillax now :3

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