Can I remove mhwd?

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1

Hi all!
I have taken over my brothers stuff after him sadly passing, he made sure I had all logins and stuff with his passwd manager.
He used to be a pretty active member on this forum a few years ago but can’t login with his account for some reason so I made a new, but this is beside the point of this post, I just mention it in case someone recognizes my username. Twins…

So with that out of the way, I know the title sounds a bit strange, but let me try to explain why I ask.
His laptop is running manjaro and when I today went to update (I’m a bit bad keeping up with this laptop) I noticed it wanted to pull nvidia stuff. But the thing is, this laptop is intel, no nvidia stuff at all.
Started digging a bit (I use arch myself) and found that nvidia drivers are dependencies to mhwd-db.
Do I actually need mhwd if running an intel laptop or can I simply wipe it and therefore be able to uninstall all the drivers it pulls as dependencies?
I guess I still need mhwd-kernel, is that dependent on the same db? (I only made minor research before I realized I can just post on this forum instead)

Same with linux-firmware-nvidia, but that is due to linux-firmware-meta so I guess with that I can just pull whatever firmware I actually need on this device instead of the meta package and that would solve that.

This is not a massive issue or anything, but you know.. Bloat and stuff. :wink:

Thank you in advance.

2

mhwd is and the related database can be removed without breaking the system.

mhwd is the tool used to find and install drivers for the system.

As for kernel maintenance, watchout for EOL kernels - if the running kernel is EOL the kernel is replaced with linux-meta or linux-lts-meta (if I remember correct).

3

Hi @UnconnectedBedna, and welcome!

I don’t think it’s actively pulling in the drivers to install. I think that’s only the database of the Nividia drivers, seeing as it only has intel. Hence I don’t think removing it has any benefit.

4

Just so I understand correctly, I can force remove mhwd-db even though it’s a dependency of mhwd and that will be fine?

5

No need to force

sudo pacman -Rns mhwd

Depending on previous installations the command may require you to append mhwd-nvidia nhwd-db

6

Oh, you mean I remove mhwd completely, not just mhwd-db
So I can still use mhwd-kernel if I do that, or should I just add kernels constantly with pacman when old goes EOL?

I haven’t looked too deeply into how kernels are handled on manjaro, but it does not seem to be the same as on arch where the kernels are just updated to the latest with pacman. Manjaro seems more like point releases kernels..?

7

Manjaro provides several kernels - but you are correct - removing mhwd will also remove the mhwd-kernel script.

When using the linux-meta package - your kernel will roll similar to Arch Linux - I am not familiar with the inner working of the functionality.

The kernels are numbered

  • linux612
  • linux618
  • linux70
  • linux71
  • linux72

If you want to keep the mhwd-kernel script - you cannot avoid the mhwd-db package.

Keep in mind the mhwd-db is just a bunch of text files - you can check them in /var/lib/mhwd

8

Yes but there is little point in doing so. Given you don’t have nVidia hardware,no nVidia drivers will be installed.

10

@linux-aarhus

Oh, there is a meta package, I missed that.

I’ll just wing it and see how it goes. :slight_smile:

Thank you.

@tracyanne

But there are since they are dependencies to mhwd-db…

$ pacman -Qi mhwd-db
Name            : mhwd-db
Version         : 20260305-1
Description     : Manjaro Linux Hardware Detection Database
Architecture    : any
URL             : https://gitlab.manjaro.org/applications/mhwd-db
Licenses        : GPL-3.0-or-later
Groups          : None
Provides        : None
Depends On      : libnotify  mhwd-amdgpu  mhwd-ati  mhwd-nvidia>=455  mhwd-nvidia-390xx  mhwd-nvidia-470xx  mhwd-nvidia-580xx  nvidia-driver-assistant
Optional Deps   : None
Required By     : mhwd
Optional For    : None
Conflicts With  : None
Replaces        : None
Installed Size  : 46,38 KiB
Packager        : Philip Mueller <philm@manjaro.org>
Build Date      : 2026-03-27T23:06:11 CET
Install Date    : 2026-04-09T15:30:50 CEST
Install Reason  : Explicitly installed
Install Script  : Yes
Validated By    : Signature


$ pacman -Qs nvidia
local/libvdpau 1.5-4
    Nvidia VDPAU library
local/linux-firmware-nvidia 20260519-1
    Firmware files for Linux - Firmware for NVIDIA GPUs and SoCs
local/mhwd-nvidia 610.43.02-2
    MHWD module-ids for nvidia 610.43.02
local/mhwd-nvidia-390xx 390.157-28
    MHWD module-ids for nvidia 390.157
local/mhwd-nvidia-470xx 470.256.02-17
    MHWD module-ids for nvidia 470.256.02
local/mhwd-nvidia-570xx 570.211.01-1
    MHWD module-ids for nvidia 570.211.01
local/mhwd-nvidia-575xx 575.64.05-3
    MHWD module-ids for nvidia 575.64.05
local/mhwd-nvidia-580xx 580.159.04-1
    MHWD module-ids for nvidia 580.159.04
local/nvidia-driver-assistant 0.23.48.01-6
    Detect and install the best NVIDIA driver packages for the system
local/xf86-video-nouveau 1.0.18-1 (xorg-drivers)
    Open Source 3D acceleration driver for nVidia cards

Mod edit: Consecutive posts merged.

11

They are just database entries. Not the actual Drivers. Remove them if you so choose. It’s not a big issue either way.

12

Oh!
Well that changes things.. Then it’s just “a little bloat”, that’s not so bad I guess. I thought it would pull the entire series of drivers and that would be quite sizeable.

Thank you for clarifying!

13

If your intention is to remove obsolete packages you should be able to remove

  • linux-firmware-nvidia
  • xf86-video-nouveau

When a system is installed and it is detected to be intel GPU - a subset of packages are installed as part of the video-linux database entry.

The rest is just text files used to create a on-the-fly PKGBUILD to install the drivers for the system.

Yes - there exist some small overlap because some - e.g. libvdpau is required by ffmpeg

14

Thank you all for the quick responses and clarifications!

I think Tracyannes response is the most relevant so I’ll select that as the solution and the rest can be read if users finding this actually want to remove them. I think I’ll just keep them and move on since they are just tiny files.

Have a great Sunday all!

15

You mean @bedna? I’m sorry to hear that. :pensive_face:

16

OMG I remember him well, especially that profile image!

Sorry for your loss!