During today’s update yay reported that nvidia-installer was not found. Reading the wiki it seems that nvidia-installer-dkms is recommended. I removed nvidia-installer, installed the dkms version plus headers and ran it. All ok.
You install ‘nvidia’ if you’re only using the mainline kernel (the ‘linux’ package).
You install ‘nvidia-lts’ if you’re only using the LTS kernel (the ‘linux-lts’ package).
Same for w/e other kernel package is available with an accompanying nvidia package.
You install ‘nvidia-dkms’ if you’re using/compiling custom kernels that do not have an accompanying nvidia package.
There is no point or benefit to using ‘nvidia-dkms’ otherwise (such as in any of the above mentioned cases).
Is this still good advice? Or is it just old outdated thinking?
I agree with what @jonathon is saying that the dkms version is there because no one knows what kernel the user is going to install. Nvidia has enough issues on it’s own so preventing more issues is always a good approach.
As others already say, nvidia-installer-dkms is preferred over nvidia-installer.
Both are just helpers, the same can be done manually.
An additional reason is that nvidia-installer package was not updated for a long time, unlike nvidia-installer-dkms. So nvidia-installer became outdated.
there is also a case where it is good to use dkms version also if you only have main kernel running, in case that kernel updates and nvidia package is not updated at the same time, you will not be able to run X, not so if you are using dkms package, as it will build the modules on updating the kernel automatically
