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@ashddev ashddev commented Dec 21, 2025

Fixes #3954

This PR updates the NVIDIA hardware install script to install the legacy NVIDIA driver for older GPUs (Pascal (10xx), Maxwell (9xx), Kepler (7xx)), as suggested in the recent Arch Linux announcement.

@ashddev ashddev changed the title fix(nvidia): install legacy NVIDIA driver older GPUs fix(nvidia): install legacy NVIDIA driver on older GPUs Dec 21, 2025
@dhh dhh requested a review from ryanrhughes December 22, 2025 21:56
# Turing (16xx, 20xx), Ampere (30xx), Ada (40xx), and newer recommend the open-source kernel modules
# Pascal (10xx), Maxwell (9xx), Kepler (7xx) and older use legacy branch that can only be installed from AUR
if [ "$NVIDIA_DRIVER" = "$NVIDIA_DRIVER_CURRENT" ]; then
DRIVER_PACKAGES=(nvidia-open-dkms nvidia-utils lib32-nvidia-utils libva-nvidia-driver)
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@Kn0ax Kn0ax Dec 23, 2025

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I don't know if it was always like this, but apparently Nvidia-utils is a dependency for Nvidia packages, meaning we don't need to install it separately.

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Fair it is a dependency, but I don't see a problem with being explicit here for the sake of clarity and in case dependencies change.

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Kn0ax commented Dec 23, 2025

Should we inform users whether their graphics card is currently supported by NVIDIA or by the Arch team?

Right now, the script assumes that if a user does not have a GPU newer than the Pascal architecture, it will get the 580xx driver, which is not supported by older cards, and users are likely going to be unaware of this.

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Kn0ax commented Dec 23, 2025

this should handle migration for mentioned cards
(sorry, i couldn't add this as a commit to current branch for some reason.)

echo "Migrate legacy NVIDIA GPUs to nvidia-580xx driver"

# Skip if no nvidia packages are installed
if ! pacman -Qq 2>/dev/null | grep -q '^nvidia'; then
  exit 0
fi

# Skip if its a "modern" gpu
if lspci | grep -iE 'nvidia. *(RTX [2-9][0-9]|GTX 16)'; then
  exit 0
fi

# Remove current nvidia driver packages
omarchy-pkg-drop nvidia nvidia-dkms nvidia-utils lib32-nvidia-utils

# Install 580xx driver from AUR
yay -S --needed --noconfirm nvidia-580xx-dkms nvidia-580xx-utils lib32-nvidia-580xx-utils

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ashddev commented Dec 23, 2025

Should we inform users whether their graphics card is currently supported by NVIDIA or by the Arch team?

Right now, the script assumes that if a user does not have a GPU newer than the Pascal architecture, it will get the 580xx driver, which is not supported by older cards, and users are likely going to be unaware of this.

Thanks for taking the time to review my PR!

Yeah it may be simplest to just inform the user if their GPU is legacy and unsupported based on this status table and direct them to the wiki if so.

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NVIDIA hardware install script installs unsupported driver on Pascal and older GPUs

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