What is the difference between nvidia-inst and nvidia?

General system Newbie
1

Hello friends.

I have learned how to install the nvidia drivers on this forum by installing the EOS program nvidia-inst.

But I found on youtube some video tutorials and I saw that most of them used yay -S nvidia nvidia-utils nvidia-settings.

So I was wondering what is the difference between nvidia-inst from EOS and that command?

I think nvidia-inst automatically finds and installs the latest driver for your GPU, right?

But does it also automatically install nvidia-utils and nvidia-settings?

And what does the yay -S nvidia command do? Does it install the nvidia driver your GPU needs?

I saw that they mostly use this command in Arch, and I wanted to know if this is a better option.

Thanks in advance!

EDIT:

Do I also need to install the 32-bit version to play some old games?

2

If I remember correctly nvidia-inst installs the nvidia-dkms package from the repo, which will work with both the “linux” kernel package and other “linux” packages as well such as "linux-lts. It will save you from having to install a separate nvidia package for each kernel. If you have the “linux” and “linux-lts” kernel installed you would have install both the “nvidia” package and the “nvidia-lts” package. nvidia-dkms use dkms the generate an nvidia kernel module for the install and running kernels.

I’m not sure about if nvidia-inst install nvidia-utils and settings, can’t test it out since I’m not running EndeavourOS on my system that has an Nvidia gpu. But you can look up the nvidia package and you will see “nvidia-utils” listed under “Dependencies”

If you want your gpu to be able to run graphics for 32 bit applications you will have to install the 32 bit versions of those nvidia packages but I think nvidia-inst has an option for that. See the Archwiki Nvidia page.

  1. For 32-bit application support, also install the corresponding lib32 package from the multilib repository (e.g. lib32-nvidia-utils).
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3

Thank you very much friend.

I didn’t know what a dependency was exactly, they are files that EOS installs to install a program, it seems to be.

And I can see the dependencies of any package from that web page, looking for the package name, interesting.

In this case nvidia-dkms and nvidia-utils are installed with that package.

I found this command in guides to play Steam games:

yay -S nvidia nvidia-dkms nvidia-settings nvidia-utils lib32-nvidia-utils opencl-nvidia lib32-opencl-nvidia libvdpau libxnvctrl vulkan-icd-loader lib32-vulkan-icd-loader

So, I have to look with the command yay -Ss every package that appears in that command, and see which ones are installed on my EOS, and then install the ones I don’t already have. (At least I use this command to see what programs I have installed, I don’t know if there is another command for this)

Also, after running nvidia-inst, I have to run nvidia-inst --32, to install the 32-bit drivers.

I don’t think I forgot anything related to this.

Thank you very much friend, I think you solved all my doubts if I don’t forget something else, I’m going to leave this thread open a little longer!

4

That command doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. It is installing both nvidia and nvidia-dkms. I would not follow that guide.

2 Likes
5

You can do it using pacman as well, probably faster.

pacman -Si nvidia-dkms      
Repository      : extra
Name            : nvidia-dkms
Version         : 535.86.05-2
Description     : NVIDIA drivers - module sources
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : http://www.nvidia.com/
Licenses        : custom
Groups          : None
Provides        : NVIDIA-MODULE  nvidia
Depends On      : dkms  nvidia-utils=535.86.05  libglvnd
Optional Deps   : None
Conflicts With  : NVIDIA-MODULE  nvidia
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6

No, you can just add --needed to the command and it will automatically install what you are missing. But, again, don’t do that with that command.

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7

Is that a yay specific option since yay uses pacman and pacman resolves needed dependencies already, just asking because I don’t use yay and haven’t used it enough to know?

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8

No. It works with pacman and yay.

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9

When you check the pacman documentation, it sounds like it does something different. Good to know it also does that.

 --needed
           Do not reinstall the targets that are already up-to-date.
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10

Thanks, I’m looking at several guides at the same time, and I end up getting confused or mixing commands (I always ask before installing anything).

The guide is this, I don’t even know if it’s out of date, plus it’s for Arch and may not be 100% applicable to EOS:

Thanks, it works!

To find out if I have a program installed, it’s enough with -Ss and look in the list if it appears installed, right?

Sorry I did not understand.

First I install yay -S nvidia-inst, and then I run nvidia-inst, and after the installation is done, I reboot (already did).

And now to install the 32-bit version, do I need to run --needed, alone, without anything else, or did you mean I had to run nvidia-inst --needed the first time, or --needed --32 after install the regular version?

Sorry, it’s not your fault, my understanding is very bad!

So many years in Windows my mind is dead :sweat:

EDIT:

Sorry, I think I’m replying to the wrong comment.

What I want to do is install the 32-bit drivers from nvidia-inst, to play old games.

About the Steam guide command, I won’t use that one, thanks for telling me!

11

No, --needed isn’t for nvidia-inst, it is for pacman/yay.

If you already have the nvidia drivers installed and working, don’t use nvidia-inst again.

Simply add it with pacman sudo pacman -Syu lib32-nvidia-utils --needed

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