|
bumblebee |
3.2.1-16~gpu16.04.1 |
Rico Tzschichholz
() |
|
glslang |
7.8.2853-2~gpu18.04.1 |
Rico Tzschichholz
() |
|
libvdpau |
1. |
no signer
() |
|
libvdpau |
1.5-1 |
no signer
() |
|
libvdpau |
1.4-3build2 |
Julian Andres Klode
() |
|
libvdpau |
1. 3-1ubuntu2
|
Matthias Klose
() |
|
libvdpau |
1.3-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2 |
Michael Marley
() |
|
libvdpau |
1.2-0ubuntu0~gpu16.04.1 |
Michael Marley
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-304 |
304.137-0ubuntu0~gpu16.04.1 |
Rico Tzschichholz
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-340 |
340. 108-0ubuntu5.20.04.2
|
Dimitri John Ledkov
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-340 |
340.108-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 |
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-340 |
340.107-0ubuntu0.16.04.2 |
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-390 |
390.157-0ubuntu6 |
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-390 |
390. 157-0ubuntu5.23.04.1
|
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-390 |
390.157-0ubuntu0.22.10.1 |
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-390 |
390.157-0ubuntu0.22.04.2 |
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-390 |
390.157-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 |
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-470 |
470. 182.03-0ubuntu1
|
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-470 |
470.182.03-0ubuntu0.22.10.1 |
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-470 |
470.182.03-0ubuntu0.22.04.1 |
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-470 |
470.182.03-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 |
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-515 |
515. 105.01-0ubuntu1
|
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-515 |
515.105.01-0ubuntu0.22.10.1 |
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-515 |
515.105.01-0ubuntu0.22.04.1 |
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-515 |
515.105.01-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 |
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-525 |
525. 116.04-0ubuntu1
|
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-525 |
525.116.04-0ubuntu0.23.04.1 |
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-525 |
525.116.04-0ubuntu0.22.10.1 |
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-525 |
525.116.04-0ubuntu0.20.04.1 |
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-525 |
525. 116.04-0ubuntu0.18.04.1
|
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-530 |
530.41.03-0ubuntu2 |
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-530 |
530.41.03-0ubuntu2 |
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-530 |
530.41.03-0ubuntu0.22.04.2 |
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-530 |
530. 41.03-0ubuntu0.20.04.2
|
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-530 |
530.41.03-0ubuntu0.18.04.2 |
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-535 |
535.54.03-0ubuntu0~gpu23.10.1 |
Rico Tzschichholz
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-535 |
535.54.03-0ubuntu0~gpu22.10.1 |
Rico Tzschichholz
() |
|
nvidia-graphics-drivers-535 |
535. 54.03-0ubuntu0~gpu22.04.1
|
Rico Tzschichholz
() |
|
nvidia-settings |
510.47.03-0ubuntu1 |
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-settings |
470.57.01-0ubuntu0.20.04.3 |
Alberto Milone
() |
|
nvidia-settings |
418.56-0ubuntu0~gpu16.04.1 |
Michael Marley
() |
|
spirv-headers |
1. 3-1~gpu18.04.1
|
Rico Tzschichholz
() |
|
vulkan |
1.1.73+dfsg-1~gpu18.04.1 |
Rico Tzschichholz
() |
|
vulkan |
1.1.73+dfsg-1~gpu16.04.1 |
Rico Tzschichholz
() |
|
vulkan-loader |
1.1.126.0-2~gpu18.04.1 |
Rico Tzschichholz
() |
|
vulkan-tools |
1. 2.131.1+dfsg1-1
|
no signer
() |
|
vulkan-tools |
1.1.126.0+dfsg1-1~gpu18.04.1 |
Rico Tzschichholz
() |
|
vulkan-validationlayers |
1.2.131.2-1 |
no signer
() |
How To Only Install NVIDIA Display Drivers (No Extra Software)
Graphics drivers are a vital and essential part of running a modern PC, but they’re often packed with aggravating bloatware. Some software might be useful, what do you do if you want to get rid of the extra junk?
The easiest way to get rid of NVIDIA bloatware is to run a third-party program like NVSlimmer that automatically removes this additional software. You can also try doing a custom installation and deselect any additional software you do not want.
Another option would be to selectively uninstall unwanted software after updating your NVIDIA display driver.
We’re going through every single thing you need to know about the software that comes packed with your NVIDIA graphics driver and how you can get rid of that bloatware if you don’t want it.
What is a Graphics Driver Anyway?
Every computer you’ve owned has relied on a graphics driver. This is an essential piece of software in every single PC and is especially important for people who rely on a lot of graphics power for games and video editing software.
It might surprise you that most people don’t know what a graphics driver actually does.
The graphics driver in your computer is responsible for sending instructions to the graphics card so that it can process visuals. One way to think about this is that your graphics card is a machine for producing visuals and the graphics driver are the instructions your computer needs to operate that machine.
Most of the time you won’t have to worry about installing or updating your graphics driver. If you have a standard Windows PC and a popular graphics card, there’s a good chance that things are just going to be automatically updating for you when your computer goes through its usual software updates.
However, graphics drivers can come with a lot of additional software that people don’t always need.
What is The Bloatware That Comes With Graphics Drivers?
Looking at the extra software that came with your NVIDIA graphics card is a bit of a complicated conversation to have.
On one hand, there’s a lot of people that see this as unnecessary bloatware. There are even a few programs that can be installed with your graphics driver that many people consider to be spyware. There’s also a risk that all of this additional software is going to be cutting into performance that you can be using elsewhere.
Some software is legitimately useful. If you’re looking to use first party overclocking, tuning, or the other software that comes with your NVIDIA graphics card, it might save you time and effort just to get it all installed in one place.
The available drivers and software for an RTX 3070 Ti on Windows 10
Here’s a list of a few of the programs that might come with your NVIDIA graphics driver, that probably don’t need to:
- NView
- Optimus
- GFExperience
- GeForce Game Ready Driver
- HDAudio (Keep this one if you need an audio driver)
- NV3DVision
- NvCamera
- Telemetry
- ShadowPlay
- Shield Wireless Controller
Note: The exact bundled software will vary depending on your graphics card version, and operating system. For example, older NVIDIA cards would bundle ‘Miracast’ – but this has not been included for a few years now.
This isn’t a complete list of all the bloatware that can come with an NVIDIA graphics driver, but it is a list of some of the biggest culprits. You want to check with the software that comes with the current driver release for your graphics card to see what specific bloatware is coming with your download.
Pros of Graphic Card Software
We have to start things off by taking a look at the pros of using the included NVIDIA software that comes with your graphics driver. These programs take a lot of heat for being bloatware, but there are some situations where they’re very useful.
GeForce Experience is probably one of the most important ones we need to talk about. While there are people who either won’t use GeForce Experience, think that it’s lowering their PC performance, or just don’t like it—this can be very useful can be useful.
GeForce Experience allows you to optimize your graphics and gaming experience. This piece of software is very directed towards gamers so if you’re not into gaming, this might not be the right choice for you.
A lot of the other programs that come with your NVIDIA driver are going to be pretty conditional. Here are two solid examples: Shield Wireless Controller is great if you don’t have a driver for your wireless controller.
ShadowPlay lets you record game footage as well as stream and share it with friends.
You can already tell that you don’t necessarily need to take a scorched-earth approach to removing NVIDIA’s extra software. It might be beneficial to keep a few of these programs, but get rid of most of them.
Cons of Extra Graphic Card Software
A Palit RTX 3060 Ti graphics card
Now we need to jump right into the controversy and talk about the cons of all of this bloatware that comes with the NVIDIA graphics driver.
The truth of the matter is that you really don’t need most of the software. Even the best parts about GeForce Experience are probably better served by third-party optimizing programs.
It might seem like ShadowPlay and other features are great for streaming and sharing footage, but if you plan on streaming on Twitch or YouTube, there are better options out there for you that are going to be more responsive and use less PC power.
NB: Now we need to talk about the biggest villain when it comes to NVIDIA’s bloatware: Telemetry.
Telemetry is a piece of marketing software that many people would consider to be “outright spyware” that is packaged with NVIDIA drivers (although others disagree, and say that it’s not spying on you).
Telemetry tracks information about your graphics card experience. It reads crash reports, knows what games are playing, and gathers user data.
NVIDIA claims that they do not use individual-level data, but instead uses the aggregate of all user data, when sharing this data with third parties. However, there really is no way to know exactly what NVIDIA is doing with this information.
The big takeaway here is that NVIDIA’s extra software is convenient. However, it’s definitely not the best choice when it comes to optimizing games and sharing gameplay.
What Is All That Extra Software Comes With NVIDIA Drivers?
In order to give the extra software that came with your NVIDIA driver a fair shake, we should take a closer look at it.
Even if you came to this article dead set on this NVIDIA software being bloatware, it’s important to know exactly what it’s doing to your PC—and doing with your information.
We’re going to look at a few of the most talked-about pieces of extra software when it comes to NVIDIA.
GeForce Experience
Screenshot from NVIDIAs website for GeForce Experience
GeForce Experience is a popular piece of software that will come with your NVIDIA graphics driver.
GeForce Experience automatically optimizes your graphic experience depending on the game you’re playing. It also allows you to stream to YouTube, Twitch, or devices that have NVIDIA Shield installed.
GeForce experience can also let you set some custom graphics card options. It even allows you to do customizations that are specific to individual games. This does beg the question of what exactly GeForce Experience is offering that NVIDIA Control Panel isn’t.
NVIDIA Control Panel
NVIDIA Control Panel allows you to set global and specific settings for your graphics card. This is perfect for people who are looking to tune in optimizations and get that kind of dialed-in precision you can’t get elsewhere.
Whether or not NVIDIA Control Panel is going to be better than a third-party option all depends on what you’re looking to achieve with your graphics card. NVIDIA Control Panel can also do most of the optimization that GeForce Experience can.
NVIDIA Control Panel is less equipped to optimize for a specific game, but this can even be achieved if you’re willing to dig around in the settings for a while.
Optimus
Optimus is an interesting piece of software that might offer you some benefit depending on what type of device you’re running.
Optimus, as the name might suggest, is used to optimize notebooks and other devices with integrated graphics cards. These devices have traditionally struggled when it comes to balancing battery life and graphics power. Optimus attempts to constantly correct and balance this by detecting what software you’re using and adjusting PC power and battery usage accordingly.
However some people argue that this software can actually harm performance, instead arguing that removing it will improve your FPS:
https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=RJfHr-Y57LY&ab_channel=Jarrod%27sTechVideo can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Disabling Optimus = Better Gaming Performance! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJfHr-Y57LY&ab_channel=Jarrod%27sTech)
NVIDIA 3D Vision
NVIDIA 3D Vision is one that you’re definitely going to want to delete unless you have some discontinued hardware on hand.
NVIDIA 3D Vision was the software used with and videos stereoscopic 3D gaming glasses. NVIDIA discontinued this tack in 2021 which means that the value you’re getting out of NVIDIA 3D Vision today is pretty limited.
Telemetry
Finally we have to talk quickly about Telemetry. We already mentioned the pros and cons of this piece of software, but it’s worth taking a closer look. Telemetry won’t offer anything for you as a user of the software.
It’s just there for NVIDIA to gather marketing information about the types of games you play, the hardware you’re using, and crash data when things go wrong.
You could make the argument that Telemetry is helping NVIDIA create a better product, but it’s mostly there to gather marketing information from you.
Can You Install NVIDIA Drivers Without The Extra Software?
You can often install NVIDIA drivers without the extra software. Your first option is to skip the ‘automatic driver’ install option on the NVIDIA website, and instead use the “Manual Driver Search” form:
How to search for drivers manually on the NVIDIA website
This can then allow you to pick and choose which NVIDIA software you want installed. Unfortunately, much of this software still has other software bundled within it – which you still might not want.
Therefore you have three further options to choose from when it comes to installing graphics card drivers without bloatware. You’ll either need to do a custom installation, or look at some options to try and strip out all of the bloatware after your installation.
How to Install NVIDIA Drivers Without Bloatware
Here’s a quick guide for installing NVIDIA drivers without the bloatware.
Do a Custom Install
Our first option is probably going to be your best choice, but it doesn’t always work.
When you install the driver, you have the opportunity to do a custom install. This is an advanced option that will let you change things like the folder the driver gets installed into and it will also let you toggle off all of the additional bloatware.
However, this option doesn’t always appear. It seems like NVIDIA is a little reluctant to hand over the keys to removing the bloatware when it comes to doing a custom installation. In this case, you might be able to remove some of the bloatware (after install) by using Windows’ uninstall programs screen:
Add or remove programs on Windows 10
Use Third-party Software
Your single best bet is to pick up a piece of third-party software that’s designed to strip out bloatware. There are plenty of options out there, but NVSlimmer is one of the most popular choices. All you need to do is run that piece of software and you can selectively remove anything you don’t want to get installed alongside your driver.
It also allows you to set your driver installation to manual rather than as part of the regular Windows update.
This means you won’t have to deal with constantly removing bloatware whenever the graphics card decides it’s time to ready for an update.
Try DIY
You can try to strip out the bloatware the DIY way, but this has gotten a lot of mixed results and may result in the driver not being able to install.
All you need to do is open the archived file after you install the driver. You’ll be able to explore the files and delete all of the folders for the unnecessary bloatware.
Warning: However, some of those files are necessary for the installer to run and this might cause your install to crash. Only attempt this is you really want a certain bit of NVIDIA software removed, and you can’t seem to remove it via NVSlimmer (or other approaches).
What About AMD Drivers?
AMD Graphics drivers are a little less aggressive when it comes to bloatware.
You can do a minimum installation that just adds the graphic driver without any of the extras during your installation – although you will often end up with ‘AMD Software: Adrenaline Edition’ which offers some nice (albeit unessential) features:
AMD Software with graphics drivers updating
There are also the same options when it comes to using a piece of third-party software to strip out the bloatware after your installation.
Dealing with NVIDIA on Linux — Hardware on DTF
Which driver to choose: open source or proprietary? Why can’t I install the driver from the NVIDIA website? I will answer these and other questions under the cut.
68070
views
The post is aimed at people with NVIDIA graphics cards who have just switched to Linux or are about to switch.
I also note that on a PC I use English, but in case you have a system in Russian, I will attach screenshots so that you can figure it out.
Also many thanks to Sergey Latyshev for help with writing this text.
Contents
- Driver Selection
- Old video cards
- Driver installation and removal
|— Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distributions
*\—— GUI method
**|—- CLI method
**|- — Linux Mint
|— Fedora 34
|— Manjaro
*\—— GUI method
**|—- CLI method - Conclusion
Problems with contrast
|— Tiering in games
|— FireFox performance
Well, the Committee has no money for nested lists in the editor, sorry.
Driver selection
NVIDIA’s philosophy of open source software is abhorrent, so they usually don’t want to share their sources and help Linux developers with support for their driver. Because of this, the open source Nouveau driver will not be able to unlock the potential of your graphics card.
This is especially true for modern video cards with Maxwell, Pascal, Turing or Ampere architectures. For example, Nouveau does not support CUDA kernels.
AMD’s GPU driver is developed in close collaboration with the community, so most people use an open source driver that natively supports new technologies (Wayland, for example) and gives better performance. With NVIDIA, the situation is mirrored.
If you are a gamer or do 3D modeling, you will be using the proprietary driver. The open source driver can be used if you have a very old graphics card. Even for surfing the Internet, I would advise you to look at the proprietary driver, because the Nouveau driver can have problems with temperature, cooler speeds and frequency.
Below is performance comparison of open-source and proprietary drivers for GT 1030.
The open driver is Nouveau, not X.Org Source
Also keep in mind that the driver in the distribution’s repository tends to lag behind the latest NVIDIA driver.
You can check the NVIDIA website for the latest driver for your graphics card. At the moment I have this version 470.74. At the same time, in Ubuntu this driver is already in the repository, and in Manjaro in the Stable branch there is version 470.63.
NVIDIA website
Old video cards
Separately, we need to talk about old video cards. Support for older GPUs may be dropped in new versions of the NVIDIA driver, X.Org, or the kernel itself. It’s hard to give general advice here.
- Some distributions have custom repositories with older NVIDIA drivers.
- You can try using older LTS distributions. For example, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS or 16.04 LTS.
- If support is discontinued in a new kernel version, then you need to roll back to the previous kernel.
- If support is discontinued in a new version of the NVIDIA driver, then you need to roll back to the old driver.
It’s important to remember that Linux is not Windows:
- Nobody will force you to update your system for you.
- It is not worth expecting that all your hardware will work properly and will be supported. Choosing hardware for software is just as important as choosing software for hardware.
In this guide, I will not describe the installation of drivers for old video cards, but I will attach links where you can learn more about installation.
Driver installation and removal
In this part of the article, I will cover the process of installing and uninstalling NVIDIA’s proprietary driver via GUI and CLI (Command Line Interface) using popular distributions in different DE as an example.
Why do I need to show the installation via the CLI? Is it really impossible to use Linux in 2021 without knowing the commands in the terminal? Can. But forewarned is forearmed.
Neither I nor my friends have encountered the problem of NVIDIA driver failure and manual reinstallation, but this knowledge may be useful to you.
Also remember forever that DO NOT install the NVIDIA driver from their website. If you are using a packaged distribution, then you need to use the packages from the repositories. There are reasons for this:
- The NVIDIA driver from the site may overwrite libraries from the mesa package, which may cause your open driver to stop working.
- When updating the kernel, the NVIDIA kernel module is not built, which means you will need to reinstall the driver every time you update the kernel.
- Since now neither the open driver nor the proprietary driver works, you will need to reinstall the driver using the CLI (terminal).
Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distributions
For this guide I tested Ubuntu 20.
04, Zorin OS 16, Linux Mint 20.02 Cinnamon and Mate and the installation process is the same everywhere. Of all the distributions, I would single out Zorin OS and Pop!_OS, as they offer users with NVIDIA graphics cards a pre-installed driver. On the rest, the driver needs to be downloaded, and the Nouveau driver is used by default.
Ubuntu used to include a PPA to get the latest NVIDIA driver, but the latest driver is now in the Ubuntu repositories. The main thing is not to forget to update the repository database.
GUI method
Ubuntu and Zorin OS have a Software & Updates program. In it, we must include the item «proprietary device drivers» among the packages to be installed. Without this checkbox, NVIDIA drivers will not be shown.
Be sure to click the “Close” button and update the information about the packages in the window that appears.
After that, in the same application, we go to the Drivers / Additional Drivers tab, in which you can select the driver to use.
By default, you will have the Nouveau driver installed.
From the proposed drivers, select the desired one and apply the changes. When the installation is finished, restart the computer.
After the restart, we can go here and see which video driver is being used.
In Linux Mint, you do not need to connect third-party repositories, and the proprietary driver can be installed in the Driver Manager, which is located under the Administration item.
Before installing a proprietary driver in Mint, don’t forget to update the repositories to get the latest driver versions (see CLI item)
It is impossible to remove the driver explicitly via the GUI, but if we install another driver, the old one will be deleted.
CLI method
Most distributions use the keyboard shortcut to open the terminal: CTRL + ALT + T.
To get completely into the CLI, you can use the keyboard shortcut: CTRL + ALT + F2 or CTRL + ALT + F3 — and return back to graphical mode with: CTRL+ALT+F7.
nvidia-.*’
You can also list all installed NVIDIA libraries with:
dpkg -l | grep -i nvidia
And remove the extracted libraries point by point with the command:
sudo apt purge *package name1* *package name2* *package name3*
My deletion process would look something like this:
sudo apt purge nvidia-cfg1-470 nvidia-common-470 nvidia-compute-470 nvidia-compute-470:i386 nvidia-compute-470:amd64 #and so on
After installing the driver, restart the computer. If everything went well, then you will have the NVIDIA X Server Settings program.
If for some reason you have problems with the Nouveau driver, you can install and remove it with the following commands:
sudo apt install xserver-xorg-video-nouveau #install
sudo apt purge xserver-xorg-video-nouveau #delete
Linux Mint
While installing the proprietary driver on Linux Mint, I encountered an error that caused the NVIDIA driver to not work correctly.
Driver Manager writes that the latest driver is installed, but it is obvious that it does not work.
This is easy enough to fix. We launch the terminal and write the command there:
sudo nano /etc/modules
In the file that opens, under the comments, write the following in separate lines:
nvidia
nvidia-drm
nvidia-modeset
Save the file and exit the editor using the shortcuts: Ctrl + X, Y and Enter. We restart the PC.
Fedora 34
Compatibility for older video cards and commands for installing the driver can be found here. Next, I will describe the installation for modern video cards.
The Fedora distribution does not have a graphical utility for installing drivers, so you can install them only through the terminal.
Proprietary package repositories are not enabled by default, so we will have to enable RPM Fusion ourselves. There are several ways to do this, but I will describe two: through the Software application or using the terminal.
If you chose the first option, then we must go to the Software application and click on the menu button in the upper right corner and select Software Repositories from the drop-down menu.
In the window that opens, we are interested in “RPM Fusion blah blah blah NVIDIA Driver”. Select this item and click Enable.
If you chose the second option, then we should go to the rpmfusion site and find out the address of the mirror for Nonfree RPM Fusion packages. Copy the link and write the following command in the terminal:
sudo dnf install https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
When NVIDIA driver repositories are added, we update the system with commands:
sudo dnf update
sudo dnf upgrade
To install the driver and build its kernel module, use the command:
sudo dnf install akmod-nvidia
After that, you need to wait up to 5 minutes for the module to be assembled.
You can check the success of the assembly using the command modinfo -F version nvidia
And optionally, to enable support for CUDA, NVDEC or NVENC technologies after installation, you need to register the command:
sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda
After that, restart the system.
You can remove the video driver using the following commands:
sudo dnf remove \*nvidia\*
sudo dracut —force
Manjaro
Despite the fact that Manjaro is a rolling distribution, packages get into the stable branch after a thorough review. Because of this, the latest driver for your video card may not be in the repository, and you will need to change the current branch to Unstable. I will not describe this process here, but you now have a starting point.
Manjaro has MHWD (Manjaro HardWare Detection) which performs the same function as Software & Updates with ubuntu-devices in Ubuntu. MHWD helps install drivers for your devices.
It has GUI and CLI versions.
GUI method
The GUI version of MHWD is located in the Manjaro Settings Manager. The interface we need is in the Hardware Configuration.
Here we can see our device and the list of drivers for it.
video-nvidia is the latest NVIDIA proprietary driver available.
video-linux is an open source Nouveau driver.
You can download the driver through the RMB on the desired driver or the Auto Install button on top.
After the download is complete, restart the PC.
The driver is also removed in this menu via RMB, where we have the Remove option.
CLI method
You can check the current video driver using the command glxinfo | grep OpenGL
You can find out the list of drivers available for your video card using mhwd -l or mhwd -la .
video-nvidia is the latest NVIDIA proprietary driver available.
video-linux is an open source Nouveau driver.
In order to install the proprietary driver, we must use the command:
sudo mhwd -i pci video-nvidia
When the installation completes, you should see a message that the installation was successful. After that, you need to restart the system.
After restarting, we can check the installed driver with a familiar command.
To uninstall a video driver, you need to know its name. You can view the installed drivers using the commands mhwd -li or mhwd -li -d
In order to remove the proprietary driver, we can use the command:
sudo mhwd -r pci video-nvidia
What problems can occur
All settings in NVIDIA X Server can be changed via CLI and configs, but I will show everything using the NVIDIA X Server Settings graphical utility as an example.
Configuration load at startup
The problem is relevant for Manjaro users.
It is not enough to change the value in this application. Between sessions, the X Server, which is responsible for rendering, does not save our values, which means we will have to save the values in the configuration file and load it at startup. In all Ubuntu-based distributions and Fedora, the configuration is set to autorun itself.
The driver doesn’t save values on purpose, but that doesn’t make it any easier
Select all the values we need, click on the save current configuration button on the nvidia-settings Configuration page and leave the default location.
Further actions will vary depending on the selected DE, as well as the presence in the distribution kit of utilities that track all applications in autorun. I will give preference to the GUI, but I will also have to resort to the terminal.
XFCE
In the Session and Startup application in the second tab, create a new application with the command: nvidia-settings —load-config-only , which will load the settings configuration at the start of each session.
Opposite Trigger, select the option On Login (in Russian it will be something like: «at startup», «at the entrance to the system», etc.).
GNOME and KDE
Out of the box, GNOME and KDE do not have a GUI application to add commands to autostart. But we can easily do this by creating a .desktop file in the autostart folder.
To do this, enter the following command in the terminal:
sudo nano ~/.config/autostart/nvidia-config.desktop
The contents of this file should be:
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Nvidia Configuration
GenericName=Nvidia Configuration Loader
Exec=nvidia-settings —load-config-only
terminal=false
Type=Application
Save and exit the editor using the shortcuts: Ctrl + X, Y and Enter.
Contrast problem
Your monitor’s Color Range is set to 9 by default.0023 Full . With certain monitor settings, this can cause problems with the display of interfaces. For example, on a site, the background will merge with the front, etc.
You can leave everything as it is and adjust the monitor, or instead of Full you can select option Limited . If you need a more flexible setting, then you can go to the adjacent Color Correction tab and tweak the values as you need.
After you’ve finished, don’t forget to save the configuration, otherwise you’ll have to re-adjust the colors after starting the PC.
Tearing in games
Despite the enabled VSYNC, you can watch the picture tearing. Personally, I only encountered this in Half-Life 2.
This is easily fixed in the same NVIDIA X Server. This time we need to go to X Server Display Configuration.
Here we select our monitor and press the Advanced button in the right corner. There are a few more points. We are interested in Force Full Composition Pipeline . Check the box next to this option, click Apply and save the configuration (we need a save button is NOT in this window, but the last nvidia-settings Configuration).
Now there should be no tearing.
FireFox performance
After switching from Windows, I noticed a performance degradation in Firefox on my PC. Thanks to Daniil Maslennikov, I learned how to improve the situation a little, for which I thank him very much! Chromium works better anyway, but this information may be useful to someone.
Firefox works best with the Wayland compositor, which is currently only natively supported on AMD graphics cards. Wayland in Firefox runs WebRender by default, which can give a noticeable performance boost. But personally for me, even on xx, it began to work much faster, although you put it at your own peril and risk.
To enable WebRender , you need to enter in the address bar: about:config — and in the same place in the search: gfx.webrender.all . And put the value true .
Conclusion
Now with video drivers in Linux everything is much better than before, especially with modern video cards.
Although NVIDIA pursues a strange policy with its drivers, over time it has to back down and listen to the community. And many distributions try to be more user-friendly by providing user-friendly interfaces.
I hope you found this post helpful. If you have something to add or ask, and also you notice a mistake — write in the comments.
How to solve problems updating NVIDIA drivers in Windows 11
Windows 11 users still often encounter various problems. One of them is an error when trying to update NVIDIA graphics drivers.
In this article, I will show you how to deal with this problem.
Method 1: Download NVIDIA GeForce Experience
NVIDIA GeForce Experience is a proprietary program designed to expand the graphics capabilities of a video card and unlock additional features. Among them there is also a tool for automatically updating drivers. If you have not installed this software yet, I recommend that you do so and run the update through it.
Often this allows you to cope with errors, and the installation proceeds correctly.
Download NVIDIA GeForce Experience from the official website
The community is now in Telegram
Subscribe and stay up to date with the latest IT news
Subscribe
Method 2: Disable NVIDIA services
Other users have noticed that temporarily pausing NVIDIA services solves problems that arise when trying to install a new version of the driver. This will not take much time and will not affect the operation of the OS in any way, and the changes made can always be returned by starting the services manually or by restarting the PC.
-
Open menu «Start» and through the search, find the application «Services» .
-
In it, look for items that have «NVIDIA» in their names.
-
Right-click on each of them in turn and from the context menu that appears, select «Stop» .
Do not restart your PC now, but proceed directly to updating the driver by running it through the installer or GeForce Experience. If the error reappears, proceed to the next methods.
Method 3: Disable NVIDIA processes
While Windows is running, not only NVIDIA services are active, but also some tasks that can be viewed through the Task Manager. We will use the same menu to disable them in order to achieve the result.
-
Right-click on the Start button and select Task Manager from the list that appears .
-
Change to tab «Details» and look for processes named «NVIDIA» .
-
Click on each one in turn and click «End task» .
Method 4: Deleting problematic files
Sometimes updating drivers becomes impossible due to problematic files that the program cannot change or replace. If it really is them, deleting the objects should solve the problem.
Below I leave the paths, and you need to go through them and delete either individual files or all of them (depending on the path itself).
C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nvdsp.inf document C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nv_lh document C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nvoclock document C:Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation C:Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation
Keep in mind that in some situations deleting folders breaks the current driver, so back up the folders or prepare a version of the software in advance that you can install instead of the current one, restoring the correct operation of the graphic adapter.
Method 5: Cleaning registry keys
This method has almost the same result as the previous one, but allows you to reset settings through registry keys whose settings may interfere with the update. You will need to navigate through the paths and remove the entries. Don’t worry, clearing them won’t affect your operating system.
-
Open the utility Run using the keyboard shortcut Win + R enter in the field regedit and press Enter .
-
In the Registry Editor you are interested in two paths: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\Logging and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\NVIDIA Corporation\Logging .
-
Delete the keys located there and restart the computer.
Method 6: Disabling Windows Defender
For the most part, this method is relevant when using third-party software, but do not exclude the fact that Windows 11 Defender for some reason can block the NVIDIA installer, especially if you are somewhere found a beta version, and the software is still considered unverified. In another article, I talked about how to temporarily disable the antivirus of the operating system. Follow the instructions, then try to install the driver again.
Read more: How to disable Windows Defender 11
Method 7: Remove the current driver version
Uninstalling the current driver version and then installing a new one is a risky method of solving the problem, since the error may remain and you will have to look for another version of the software for its correct installation on the computer. If you are ready for this, follow these steps:
-
Right-click on the Start button and call «Device Manager» .
-
Find your graphics card in «Display adapters» , right-click on it and select «Remove device» .
-
Be sure to check the box «Attempting to uninstall the driver for this device» , then confirm the action.
Most likely, now some screen resolutions will not be available for you, and the picture will become somewhat scaled. This will be resolved after installing the driver, but it has yet to be installed by choosing any convenient method (executable file downloaded from the official site, GeForce Experience, or third-party driver installation software).