Guys, what I currently don’t like about Nvidia drivers is the following:
- you need to know if you have to use the open kernel one or not
- you might need to enable systemd services to make it work (this is now done via alpm postinstall scripts)
- you have to know if you enable or disable the GSP firmware
I have a fairly new 4060 mobile GPU and that driver drives me nuts. 550 is the last proper old style driver Nvidia will release. It already has linux 6.12 support, what the newer drivers don’t have. If you look how hard Arch is trying to get this driver working.
So we should stop expecting that the user is willing to tweak and setup the graphics drivers on his own. That we did in the past for the user via mhwd and other tools. Now I see the Arch-way trend more popping up, which is not what we originally aimed for.
Some users might get it going and done when deep diving into that topic, but that are only few. Sure we give some hints to do this or that, but if you simply update your system or install it fresh you expect it to simple working without the need of using the terminal.
So for now all users might still use the proprietary drivers. Nvidia recommends the open-kernel ones for a lot of their newer hardware. So if the proprietary drivers stop supporting those newer hardware it is harder for us getting those adopted to the new ones. There are no compiled kernel modules for the open-kernel versions yet.
To quote some of that article:
As mentioned earlier, if you’re unsure which driver to pick for the GPUs in your system, NVIDIA created a helper script to guide you through the selection process.
To use it, first install the
nvidia-driver-assistantpackage with your package manager, then run the script:
$ nvidia-driver-assistant
I mentioned it before when this article hit the web. nvidia-driver-assistant seems to be part of some package we don’t ship yet or is somewhere in the installer run file or only distributed for Ubuntu and Suse.
I see unstable branch as a stage branch for experiments and builds, which now get widely used by our users too. Those who want the latest packages. However, we have to dig into that Nvidia driver problem more deeply and together who are willing to test, willing to break their systems on purpose to get it done properly.
In the end a simple sudo pacman -Syu should be enough to get newer drivers properly working. No hints, no expectations the user may administrate his machine - anything.
I see a direction to get there, however it might be still a lot of work. Nvidia feature drivers are not so great in sense of stability. Sure Nvidia is now more open and discuss those issue now more openly: 560 release feedback & discussion - Linux - NVIDIA Developer Forums
So as long as we don’t do our proper homework as distro maintainers I won’t ship newer Nvidia drivers on stable nor testing branches!