this post was submitted on 14 May 2026
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459
Install Steam on an arch-based distro with "picky" nvidia drivers (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 week ago by Lisk91@sh.itjust.works to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.world
47 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

This isn't a guide, just something i think may help. To install Steam on an Arch-based distro in most of the cases a simple sudo pacman -S steam will do just fine.

The installation will ask you to select a valid vulkan package from a list. And in most of the cases that's just fine... most of them.

Then you have your very "picky" old nvidia GPU which works only with a specific old nvidia driver and if you try to install anything else, there will be a conflict. Now you can try to remove the old (working) drivers and try your luck. But looking online i find a simple way to skip this passage and install Steam.

sudo pacman -S steam --assume-installed lib32-vulkan-driver

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[–] kinther@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

This is one of the reasons I went with AMD for my latest GPU. Not that NVIDIA sucks, I just didnt want the hassle.

[–] nothingcorporate@lemmy.today 33 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Fuck Nvidia and their powering AI systems for Netayahu's genocide. Team Red all the way.

[–] Arcane2077@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Hate to break it to you, but AMD is also contributing to genocide as much as they possibly can (Nvidia is still beating them in that aspect as well)

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 22 points 1 week ago (3 children)

let's not act like massive multinational corporations care about us, AMD is also ethically miserable, as is intel and everyone else.

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 week ago

Something something “Nazi Jew-Counting computers were supplied by IBM” I guess.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] InvisibleShoe@lemmy.world 24 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Haha I just spent the last 2 days trying to get nvidia to work on arch. Its my first time using arch but I did end up getting the drivers to work by removing the default one and installing the dkms drivers. Still a pain in the ass though.

[–] Lisk91@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 week ago

Been there, done that 👍

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

What’s this meme from? Is it a babadook still?

[–] Lisk91@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

yes

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

Thank you, good movie!

[–] Phantaloons@piefed.zip 3 points 1 week ago

Director: "Be a little shit"

[–] Bobby@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago

Depending how old the GPU is, Nouveau or the other one may lead to better results by now.

[–] Amaterasu@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

I'm lucky that I have the benefit to choose and can use another GPU brand that is open source and integrated to the kernel.

[–] yesman@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I suppose I'm lucky. Catchy installed the Nvidia driver during the install and works/ updates without issue. I've got an older card, but not ancient. gtx1660

I did have issues when I first switched to Linux, but that was on Debian.

[–] brisk@aussie.zone 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Currently "older cards" is GTX 10xx series and earlier

This is a deliberate choice made by Nvidia with respect to their proprietary drivers, and has nothing to do with the operating system.

[–] NutinButNet@hilariouschaos.com 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Cachy kept freezing on me as did many other distros I was using. I found the common reason was due to Wayland and I’ve been on Linux Mint Cinnamon ever since with no issues like that. RTX 4080 Super

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

How recent was this? Cinammon only just got experimental Wayland support, AFAIK. Like, a month or two ago?

And Cachy KDE Nvidia Wayland was jank for a while (hence it defaulted to X11), but it works fine for me, for now.

[–] NutinButNet@hilariouschaos.com 2 points 1 week ago

I made this change like back in December or so. I had been distro hopping since moving to Linux in August of last year and was on a ton of distros with KDE that all had Wayland.

I moved to Mint Cinnamon because it seemed to be one of the few that wasn’t using Wayland and my issues stopped. I believe they did have experimental Wayland on one of the versions and I made sure not to use that one since I was under the impression it was due to Wayland and remember trying to decide between the other options they had.

[–] Tim_Bisley@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago

Cach6 was the smoothest experience for me. It can be difficult with other wldistros and also with cach6 probably.

[–] snoons@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I have to reinstall the driver for my ancient 1070Ti pretty much every update.

[–] Jo4ted@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 week ago

Interesting. My 1070ti works fine after every update. I switched to CachyOS after it lost mainstream support, so maybe it's that? Idk. Best of luck figuring that out, though, sounds awful.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Maybe dkms isn't automatically building?

And yeah, like Jo4 suggested... you should try Cachy. Support is way better than stock Arch because all that is preconfigured.

[–] Solaris1220@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The image for the post is amazing lmao

[–] Lisk91@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago

Thank You 🤗

[–] LostWanderer@fedia.io 5 points 1 week ago

LOL Oofta, that was me years ago fighting for my life on an NVIDIA optimus GPU and trying to game on Linux. Total shitshow, I might have to abandon NVIDIA with my next upgrade when the prices come down, AMD is a bit better on Linux (my Ryzen is thriving and surviving on Garuda Linux). Can't wait to get a full AMD build and not have to worry about NVIDIA making things weird.

[–] yuman@programming.dev 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

anyone knows what kinda driver that isn't nouveau works for a GT750M? @mlg@lemmy.world which did you use for your 750ti?

got a Macbook Pro 2013 motherboard (i7-4850, 16 GB DDR3, GT750M 2 GB) that I'm thinking of turning into a desktop. no gaming intended, although welcome if possible (old titles).

[–] mlg@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

I'm pretty sure it's akmod-nvidia-470xx, would have to try it to see if it works.

750ti actually fell under Maxwell, and RPMFusion just split it off into akmod-nvidia-580xx for GTX 750/800/900/10 cards.

I think I faintly remember running a 600 card on linux back in the day, so no reason it shouldn't work.

[–] nocteb@feddit.org 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

try this one: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/nvidia-470xx-dkms

Edit: there is a good link as well on that driver page that should help:

https://github.com/korvahannu/arch-nvidia-drivers-installation-guide

[–] Vertelleus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 week ago

It took me days to get my nvidia gpu working correctly. Due to being wayland I can't use steamlink to stream to my Steam Deck and issues with VLC glitchy, pixeled playback. Otherwise everything works perfectly.

[–] Brewchin@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

On my desktop with a 2060 it's zero issue, but on my 940M hybrid video laptop it's been spicy at times.

Usually updates without an issue, and the most I need to do is delay the -settings package update until after the rest. (IIRC, see what I mean 😄).

[–] Lojcs@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago

Wow this is just what I needed I think

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Then you have your very “picky” old nvidia GPU which works only with a specific old nvidia driver and if you try to install anything else, there will be a conflict.

I just use TKG's installer, it's pretty much fixed all of my NVIDIA-related problems:

git clone https://github.com/Frogging-Family/nvidia-all
cd nvidia-all
makepkg -si

The default is vulkan-beta drivers via DKMS. You may need to manually install linux-headers but you may already have it installed from other DKMS-related activities.

[–] mlg@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Not to act smug but this is one area where I see akmod seem to work better than dkms which is weird considering they should both produce the same result.

[–] michaelmrose@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Nvidia supports 13 year old hardware and newest kernels with 580. At some point when running your 14 year old GPU one might consider just running the open source nouveau after all I assume that if you are running a 14 year old GPU you probably don't need the utmost possible performance or you might consider getting a 4 year old AMD for $100 to replace your 14 year old nvidia.

Whilst it would be ideal for you not to have to look up anything ever nvidia will tell you which driver to use with your hardware

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/drivers/

If you are feeling frisky you could synthesize the already available data into a script that tells you the same thing. Linux Mint has a GUI for this which tells you which version is recommended for your hardware and your total commitment is clicking install and rebooting.

[–] insomniac_lemon@lemmy.cafe 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Nvidia supports 13 year old hardware and newest kernels with 580

At some point when running your 14 year old GPU

Pascal (GTX 10 series) and Volta (expensive workstation stuff) cards from 8-10 years ago are forced to 580 too. EDIT: and to be clear this is an issue with all of the 580xx versions of packages, specifically because Arch put them into the AUR (though this directly isn't OP's issue).

Having a 1050Ti... I like the idea of an AMD (Polaris+) card, but I don't really want to buy a side-grade from the internet. I got really good deals on my other hardware (combo deals from 2019) so $100 more would actually be a decent chunk. Really just seems to me that the GPU market is behind due to crypto->NFTs->AI.

You might be right on FOSS drivers, but they seem to be still rough-around-the-edges whenever I look into it. In multiple aspects (performance, feature/technology support, segfaults). It might be true that I may not notice in some cases (lighter applications), though a 1050 Ti doesn't have the headroom where the performance could be cut in half and not result in noticeable instability.

[–] Stupendous@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I get if you're buying 5080 and up hardware, there's no other competitors there. 5070 and lower, buy AMD or Intel. 9070 (xt) are great graphics cards. The 9060xt is great. You can go down to 7600xt, A770, B580, etc and have a graphics card very capable of gaming and they work straight out the box. No proprietary driver frictions. I use a 9070. I'll be good for another 5+ years. GPU upgrade. Maybe a CPU upgrade since I'm AM5 based. No motherboard/memory changes and considering the next consoles are likely to be based on Zen 6, I'll be right with them just with a stronger CPU

[–] Tiral@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 days ago

I love my 9600xt. 16gb of ram is more than it will ever need. Also getting the same performance as my 6800xt at about 30-40% of the power, the fans barely turn on.