nvidia-inst

nvidia-inst helps installing drivers for Nvidia graphics cards when you have

Note that bumblebee is suitable mostly for older machines.

The nvidia-inst is meant to be the replacement for the older nvidia-installer-dkms.

Synopsis

nvidia-inst [options]

Options

  -h, --help              This help.
  -b, --bumblebee         Install bumblebee and Nvidia drivers for optimus cards.
  -f, --force             Force driver installation even if a nvidia card is not detected.
  -n, --nouveau           Install nouveau driver (open source).
  -p, --prime             Install also prime render offload.
  -q, --quiet             Suppress log messages.
  -t, --test              Test mode. Nothing in your system will be modified.
  -v, --version           Show version of this software.
  --32                    Install also support for 32-bit apps.
  --conf                  Create also file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf (might be needed on some systems).
  --drivers               Show supported NVIDIA driver series for your card.
  --ignore                Ignore all errors (useful for testing only).
  --legacyrepo            Add a third party repository for legacy (470 and 390 series) Nvidia drivers.
  --listopts              List options supported by nvidia-inst.
  --listseries            List Nvidia driver versions supported by nvidia-inst.
  --series                (Advanced) Use the given Nvidia driver version (for testing).

Note: option --legacyrepo is deprecated and does nothing.

Tips

Older Nvidia cards

You can try installing a legacy Nvidia driver from the AUR.

If you have an older Nvidia graphics card that is no longer supported by the latest driver from the Arch repos, you can add a 3rd party repo to /etc/pacman.conf with command

nvidia-inst --legacyrepo

and install a legacy driver using pacman.

Check and test

To see which which Nvidia driver versions support your card:

nvidia-inst --drivers

To test which packages nvidia-inst would add (or remove) without actually doing it:

nvidia-inst --test

Note that you can add other options of needed.

After the preparations above, use the appropriate options to install the drivers.

Other considerations

Other ways to manage the Nvidia graphics cards exist. One popular option is to use the optimus manager (see EndeavourOS wiki and Arch wiki).