I try removing Nouveau (Video-Linux) is it possible?

[Kobold]

Hello guys,
as a gamer and fps hunter, i asked myself if i get a faster system when i uninstall the free nvidia driver (Nouveau) from my system. Because i thought it should be the fifth wheel under my car and its time to unmount it when i use the proprietary driver anyways.

So i try to remove it yesterday with the Auto install Feature from Manjaro:
I clicked on Taskbar>Settings>Manjaro Settings Manager>Hardware Configuration and right click on Video-Linux>Remove… but the uninstall failed because there are a lot packages in the way, i remember Mesa and stuff like that.

I didn’t copy+pasted the log that showed up in the window and the only thing i can find now is in pacman.log:

[PACMAN] Running 'pacman --noconfirm --cachedir /var/cache/pacman/pkg --config /etc/pacman.conf --root / -Rs xf86-video-ati xf86-video-amdgpu xf86-video-intel xf86-video-nouveau vulkan-intel vulkan-radeon libva-mesa-driver mesa-vdpau lib32-vulkan-intel lib32-vulkan-radeon lib32-libva-vdpau-driver lib32-mesa-vdpau'

But this log info looked like a reinstall after the partial remove from this driver.
I was impressed that my system was booting again after the error’s showed up in the tiny log window

I asked myself, why is there a GUI Option to remove this Package, when the Option don’t work anyways.

Anyone here with experience around this topic… searching the forum wasn’t a success, thats why i created this Topic now.

[Aragorn]

@Kobold

uninstall the free nvidia driver (Nouveau) from my system

You cannot. nouveau is in the kernel itself because it’s licensed under GPLv2.

[Kobold]

Interesting, i think saw recently a forum user that showed a mhwd -li output with no linux-video entry (let me search it, i try to find it again).

[Aragorn]

video-linux is not an actual package. It’s a configuration preset for mhwd.

[megavolt]

@Kobold

as a gamer and fps hunter, i asked myself if i get a faster system when i uninstall the free nvidia driver (Nouveau) from my system. Because i thought it should be the fifth wheel under my car and its time to unmount it when i use the proprietary driver anyways.

Wrong assumption. It loads modules as needed and is not loaded always. If you instruct xorg to use nvidia, then it will just skip nouveau as it won’t exist.

[Kobold]

@Aragorn

video-linux is not an actual package. It’s a configuration preset for mhwd.

Yeah i found that out few mins ago:

$ pacman -Qi video-linux
error: package 'video-linux' was not found

@megavolt

If you instruct xorg to use nvidia

How i gonna do this? And is this already the case here?

[megavolt]

@Kobold

How i gonna do this? And is this already the case here?

Yes, if you use nvidia, it is already the case. It is a requirement to use nvidia actually: nouveau needs to be blocked.

[omano]

When you install the Nvidia proprietary driver, it blacklists nouveau, also:

@Kobold

pacman --noconfirm

Why are you doing things like that? It’s a recipe for disaster, especially when you don’t know what you are doing, which was the case here.

[Kobold]

@omano

@Kobold

pacman --noconfirm

Why are you doing things like that? It’s a recipe for disaster, especially when you don’t know what you are doing, which was the case here.

I didn’t coded the Manjaro Settings Manager, its the GUI that triggered this command.

I described all “simple” mouseclicks what i did in the Topic Head.

@Kobold

I asked myself, why is there a GUI Option to remove this Package, when the Option don’t work anyways.

For me it looks like, as the GUI has some terrible design flaws

I created a Timeshift snapshot before i pushed the remove button.
It looks that everything is still working after a restart and i still can do gaming,
journals also don’t show errors.

But do you think that i should rollback my system now? Just in case?

[omano]

@Kobold

I didn’t coded the Manjaro Settings Manager, its the GUI that triggered this command.

My bad I must have misread something.

To everyone, correct me if I’m wrong, but shouldn’t you supposed to be able to uninstall video-linux in Manjaro Settings Manager without issue? Pretty sure there should be no issue uninstalling video-linux.

There might be some other issues?

[Aragorn]

@Kobold

For me it looks like, as the GUI has some terrible design flaws

Now do you understand why we always tell you to use pacman instead?

[Kobold]

@Aragorn

Now do you understand why we always tell you to use pacman instead?

Not really, i mean at the end of the day a click on a UI (button) just simply use commands/code in background.

When the command’s that are linked to some Button’s, are triggering bad command’s that not suited to the situation. Doesn’t mean its the Button fault, the Button/the GUI is innocent Its the coder’s fault, who maybe implemented/linked some mistakes around the executed code and shows errors.

Spoiler alert: Manjaro Settings Manager (GUI) works flawless when i switching Kernels. And it was always a reliable Menue.

@omano

but shouldn’t you supposed to be able to uninstall video-linux in Manjaro Settings Manager without issue? Pretty sure there should be no issue uninstalling video-linux.

There might be some other issues?

I can trigger it again and post this time the output here.

[Aragorn]

@Kobold

When the command’s that are linked to some Button’s, are triggering bad command’s that not suited to the situation. Doesn’t mean its the Button fault, the Button/the GUI is innocent Its the coder’s fault, who maybe implemented/linked some mistakes around the executed code and shows errors.

That was my point: pamac is unreliable, but pacman never fails.

[Kobold]

@omano

There might be some other issues?

MHWD will remove the “Video-linux” configuration:

Starting
> Removing video-linux...
Sourcing /etc/mhwd-x86_64.conf
Has lib32 support: true
Sourcing /var/lib/mhwd/local/pci/video-linux/MHWDCONFIG
Processing classid: 0300
Sourcing /var/lib/mhwd/scripts/include/0300
Processing classid: 0380
Processing classid: 0302
checking dependencies...
error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)
:: removing libva-mesa-driver breaks dependency 'libva-mesa-driver' required by lib32-libva-mesa-driver
Error: pacman failed!
Error: script failed!


Done ...

Wait what pacman failed?

@Aragorn

but pacman never fails.

[Aragorn]

@Kobold

Wait what pacman failed?

That’s what mhwd says, and mhwd is a Manjaro tool. There’s nothing wrong with pacman itself.

[Kobold]

@Aragorn

That’s what mhwd says, and mhwd is a Manjaro tool. There’s nothing wrong with pacman itself.

+1 total agree

And i think its the same with pamac, when the coder/maintainer doing everything right there is nothing wrong with pamac itself.

Its time to sharpen our pitchforks