(install another vulkan pr.)How do I completely remove Nvidia drivers?

Seacat17 · 2025-03-09 14:51:12

I've been having an issue for almost a year now but it has nothing to do with Arch Linux in particular.

I am trying to troubleshoot it and right now I want to try and take the radical step in my investigation. I want to try and completely ditch all the Nvidia drivers and utilities from my system, remove all the settings, and after that - do a fresh driver reinstall and see if my issue is solved.

But when I try to remove nvidia-utils, I get a very silly dependency chain that requires me to uninstall STEAM. With my metered internet, it will take a good while to reinstall everything, so I want to avoid that.

How do I properly and completely remove all the Nvidia drivers and utilities and reset all their settings?

EDIT: dependency chain in question:

[seacat17@seacat17-laptop ~]$ sudo pacman -R nvidia-utils
checking dependencies...
error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)
:: removing nvidia-utils breaks dependency 'nvidia-utils=570.124.04' required by lib32-nvidia-utils
:: removing nvidia-utils breaks dependency 'nvidia-utils' required by nvidia-prime
:: removing nvidia-utils breaks dependency 'nvidia-utils' required by nvidia-settings
[seacat17@seacat17-laptop ~]$ sudo pacman -R lib32-nvidia-utils
checking dependencies...
error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)
:: removing lib32-nvidia-utils breaks dependency 'lib32-vulkan-driver' required by portproton
:: removing lib32-nvidia-utils breaks dependency 'lib32-vulkan-driver' required by steam
[seacat17@seacat17-laptop ~]$

Last edited by Seacat17 (2025-03-09 23:00:42)

Scimmia · 2025-03-09 14:59:32

This isn't Windows, reinstalling the package is the same as removing it and installing it again. What settings are you wanting to remove?

Seacat17 · 2025-03-09 15:05:32

Scimmia wrote:

This isn't Windows, reinstalling the package is the same as removing it and installing it again. What settings are you wanting to remove?

If I'll remove the drivers and then remove every folder and file from my system that has "nvidia" in it's name - will that work?

Seacat17 · 2025-03-09 15:08:23

Scimmia wrote:

This isn't Windows, reinstalling the package is the same as removing it and installing it again. What settings are you wanting to remove?

Thinking about it... Doesn't really matter, first of all I want to ditch the drivers and utils. How do I do that?

Seacat17 · 2025-03-09 17:29:05

Seems like I need to use "pacman -Rdd".

I just hope that I won't brick my system...

xerxes_ · 2025-03-09 18:18:28

You didn't write what issue do you have - why do you want to remove nvidia drivers, nor what hardware do you have?

You may check if you have, for example, this config file: /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf. If yes, then remove/move/rename it.
Here is more in case you do more custom setup and would want to check for other files and revert changes or learn something more:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Nvidia

You may, when you uninstall nvidia drivers, try nouveau kms driver in kernel to check if your issues persists. For that,, you don't install any nouveau package and whitelist (if it was blacklisted) nouveau kernel module (check /etc/modprobe.d/ directory file(s) contents).

Last edited by xerxes_ (2025-03-09 18:21:17)

cryptearth · 2025-03-09 19:58:07

Seacat17 wrote:

But when I try to remove nvidia-utils, I get a very silly dependency chain that requires me to uninstall STEAM. With my metered internet, it will take a good while to reinstall everything, so I want to avoid that.

because steam as a dependency on a lib32-vulkan provider - which you try to remove here
you can satisfy steam by installing any other vulkan-provider instead like lib32-vulkan-swrast which is software cpu rendering - and although that would only help for something like hl1 or maybe hl2 it's enough to satisfy steam's dependency so you can remove nvidia-utils without steam complaining

Seacat17 · 2025-03-09 22:52:10

xerxes_ wrote:

You didn't write what issue do you have - why do you want to remove nvidia drivers, nor what hardware do you have?

https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/issues/4503

Seacat17 · 2025-03-09 22:55:45

cryptearth wrote:

Seacat17 wrote:
But when I try to remove nvidia-utils, I get a very silly dependency chain that requires me to uninstall STEAM. With my metered internet, it will take a good while to reinstall everything, so I want to avoid that.
because steam as a dependency on a lib32-vulkan provider - which you try to remove here
you can satisfy steam by installing any other vulkan-provider instead like lib32-vulkan-swrast which is software cpu rendering - and although that would only help for something like hl1 or maybe hl2 it's enough to satisfy steam's dependency so you can remove nvidia-utils without steam complaining

TYSM FOR THIS.

Now I can make a step further in my investigation.

Arch Linux

#1 2025-03-09 14:51:12

(install another vulkan pr.)How do I completely remove Nvidia drivers?

#2 2025-03-09 14:59:32

Re: (install another vulkan pr.)How do I completely remove Nvidia drivers?

#3 2025-03-09 15:05:32

Re: (install another vulkan pr.)How do I completely remove Nvidia drivers?

#4 2025-03-09 15:08:23

Re: (install another vulkan pr.)How do I completely remove Nvidia drivers?

#5 2025-03-09 17:29:05

Re: (install another vulkan pr.)How do I completely remove Nvidia drivers?

#6 2025-03-09 18:18:28

Re: (install another vulkan pr.)How do I completely remove Nvidia drivers?

#7 2025-03-09 19:58:07

Re: (install another vulkan pr.)How do I completely remove Nvidia drivers?

#8 2025-03-09 22:52:10

Re: (install another vulkan pr.)How do I completely remove Nvidia drivers?

#9 2025-03-09 22:55:45

Re: (install another vulkan pr.)How do I completely remove Nvidia drivers?

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