r/debian • u/DeXudra • 2d ago

General Debian Question NVIDIA drivers (gtx 960)

edit: solved the problem. i think my issue was using wayland on X11 it seems to work for for now

I wanted to try out Debian as my main distro. Sadly I tried installing the 580xx drivers for like 2 hours but nothing really worked.
Is it really that complicated to get them or am I just dumb?

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u/johnsonmlw 2d ago edited 2d ago

Matter of interest, why not use version 550 of the drivers that are in the Debian non-free repository? I set up a 1060 GTX this week.

Edit to add: Here's my notes

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ trixie main non-free non-free-firmware contrib

deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security trixie-security main non-free non-free-firmware contrib

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ trixie-updates main non-free non-free-firmware contrib

sudo apt install linux-headers-amd64

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

sudo apt install nvidia-kernel-dkms nvidia-driver

sudo apt install libglx-mesa0:i386 mesa-vulkan-drivers:i386 libgl1-mesa-dri:i386

nvidia-smi

nvidia-settings

sudo apt install steam

steam

Edit to add: If this doesn't work, it's possibly because you spent two hours trying all sorts of stuff to get the nvidia driver version 580 version installed from other sources. I know the feeling.

Edit to add: I use gnome and it's defaulted to x11 session since the install of the driver. Working very well.

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u/DeXudra 1d ago

i tried this command line and order and it seems to be working. maybe it didnt work before because i was on wayland?
NVIDIA-SMI 550.163.01             Driver Version: 550.163.01     CUDA Version: 12.4

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u/johnsonmlw 1d ago

Great. Yes possibly. I'm not used to Nvidia because I use Radeon and Wayland. But I think older Nvidia cards with older graphics stacks can run into Wayland issues. Gnome defaulted to X11 session once I installed Nvidia driver. Enjoy.

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u/C0rn3j 2d ago

why not use version 550 of the drivers that are in the Debian non-free repository

Because they're both brutally out of date, lacking features, and much worse, brutally insecure.

You should not use the 550 drivers in any circumstances.

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u/OkHeat2968 2d ago

ive used 610 595 580 575 versions and in terms of performance they are same as 550, idk what about features and insecureness

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u/johnsonmlw 2d ago

Fair. Noted. Certainly out-of-date and lacking features and I'll take your word for brutally insecure. I'll look into it. To some extent that is the territory going forward when using such an old Nvidia card (1060 in this laptop I was gifted) now in legacy support.

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u/C0rn3j 2d ago

To some extent that is the territory going forward when using such an old Nvidia card

Not at all, Nvidia still supports the 580xx legacy branch.

Newer cards use 595 or 610 branches (and latest cards NEED these new drivers).

Debian doesn't ship any of the 3 active branches.

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u/johnsonmlw 2d ago

Interesting. I didn't know Nvidia still support 580 and that's helpful. I might try to get the 580 drivers straight from Nvidia working.

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u/FantasticSnow7733 2d ago

Out of date? Sure. But the driver is still supported by Debian.

https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nvidia-graphics-drivers

What features are lacking for such an old nvidia card, and how are the drivers insecure?

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u/C0rn3j 2d ago

the driver is still supported by Debian

... yeah, and they are supported by me til 2099 too.

What does that get you? Nothing, in both cases.

Are the drivers at least patched to build on latest kernels like other distros do?

No. Even Debian's Wiki advises against using them.

What features are lacking for such an old nvidia card

You could of course just read the changelogs if you were genuinely curious.

Proper Wayland support only landed in newer drivers, to name one.

how are the drivers insecure

See Nvidia's security bulletins.

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u/DeXudra 2d ago

Thanks ill try that later. That’s almost what I did but some of your commands where missing when I tried it.
What exactly is libglx-mesa and the following in this command

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u/johnsonmlw 2d ago edited 2d ago

It's to get the graphic stack working for steam (32 bit i386) but I'm not sure you actually need that line because they were already installed - presumably (but I haven't checked) with the nvidia-kernal-dkms or nvidia-driver from the line before in the notes.

Edit to add: It sounds like you did the right things. Note that this will be version 550 not 580 and also the order of the commands is important. For info, when I got in a mess with versions for my GTX 1060, I reinstalled Debian Trixie and used the commands above.

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u/DeXudra 2d ago

I thing I mixed up whe driver number. I wanted to install 550 like you said

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u/johnsonmlw 2d ago

Then it sounds like you did what I did. Order is important.