Heads up for older Nvidia cards!

Hardware
1

I just updated my system and it pulled kernel 6.18.22 and latest nvidia drivers 595.58.xx and after reboot I logged in as normally from TTY1 (I don’t use a greeter like LDDM) and it couldn’t open Sway, error was no GPU found.

My fix on Gentoo:

mask newer Nvidia drivers:

sudo nano /etc/portage/package.mask/nvidia add this:

>=x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-595

then downgrade to a 580.. series:
sudo emerge —ask -1 x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers

it installed the older driver. Then rebuild the nvidia module to the kernel:

sudo emerge @module-rebuild

reboot and Sway works! My GPU is GTX1060 3GB. So if you use older Nvidia and propetiary drivers your gpu might loose support. I don’t know how to mask a new nvidia-driver on other OSes.
Maybe someone could add their fix for let’s say Ubuntu/Debian etc..

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2

I think you may be able to blacklist drivers in /etc/modules in Debian based distros. That would let the modules install, but prevent them loading into the kernel.

The Gentoo solution is more elegant. Portage is a really powerful package manager.

This sort of thing is not really a good mark for Nvidia in the Linux world. I wonder if they have enough Linux expertese to really support Linux properly.?

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3

On Debian and possibly all derived systems the apt-mark hold <packagename> marks packages NOT to be upgraded from currently installed version. This works for nvidia-drivers too.

That is for not loading an installed drier upon boot. This particular topic seems to more about not upgrading the already installed version.

Just one additional note: once the upgrade of a package happened via an apt upgrade, and the experience shows that the earlier version worked better:
Install the previous version
apt intall <that_package>=<the_exact_version_that_works>
(For example, if I wanted to downgrade OnlyOffice, it would look like so:

root@DellG3:/home/laco# apt install onlyoffice-desktopeditors=9.3.0-140
DOWNGRADING:                          
  onlyoffice-desktopeditors

Summary:
  Upgrading: 0, Installing: 0, Downgrading: 1, Removing: 0, Not Upgrading: 0
  Download size: 331 MB
  Freed space: 13,3 kB

Continue? [I/n]

After that run apt-mark hold for that package. It won’t be upgraded until the “hold” status is removed via apt-mark unhold…

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