On Sun, 15 Jun 2025, Andreas Beckmann wrote:
If both nvidia-kernel-dkms and nvidia-open-kernel-dkms are installed,
nvidia-kernel-dkms takes precedence (this will likely change in the future in
favor of the open module). You can switch between them at runtime (and
without uninstalling any package) by running
update-glx --config nvidia
and (not) selecting the alternative with -open in its name.
This e.g. updates the alternatives to the config files which select the
actual module file names that get loaded when someone does
'modprobe nvidia' etc.
Ideally reboot after update-glx.
At least that's the theory how this was designed to work. I don't (want to)
have the hardware to actually test it ;-) But I'd like to get confirmation
whether the two dkms packages can co-exist and switched at runtime as
planned.
Thank you for describing the design. I just tried:
* I already have nvidia installed
* I install nvidia-open
-> things still work
* I use update-glx to select the open version
-> things still work
It is surprisingly difficult to find out which version is currently
loaded, but I'll interpret "loading NVIDIA UNIX Open Kernel Module" from
dmesg as a sign that I am indeed using the open version now. So I can
(weakly) confirm what you said.
(I didn't try the last step which would be removing nvidia-kernel-support)
--
Marc Glisse
