Too-new Nvidia drivers preinstalled

[inad9300]

System details

NVIDIA GeForce GT 755M, Omarchy 3.1.7

What's wrong?

I'm finding that the correct drivers for my graphics card are nvidia-470xx-dkms plus nvidia-470xx-utils plus lib32-nvidia-470xx-utils. However, a newer version seems to have been preinstalled:

$ yay -Qs nvidia

local/egl-gbm 1.1.2.1-1
    The GBM EGL external platform library
local/egl-wayland 4:1.1.20-1
    EGLStream-based Wayland external platform
local/egl-x11 1.0.3-1
    NVIDIA XLib and XCB EGL Platform Library
local/lib32-nvidia-utils 580.105.08-1
    NVIDIA drivers utilities (32-bit)
local/libva-nvidia-driver 0.0.14-1
    VA-API implementation that uses NVDEC as a backend
local/libvdpau 1.5-3
    Nvidia VDPAU library
local/linux-firmware-nvidia 20251021-1
    Firmware files for Linux - Firmware for NVIDIA GPUs and SoCs
local/nvidia-dkms 580.105.08-1
    NVIDIA kernel modules - module sources
local/nvidia-utils 580.105.08-1
    NVIDIA drivers utilities

I believe this is the reason why I'm unable to run Zed, which I've seen reported by other people too.

Other than reporting this in itself, I would like to ask for some help to get to the right drivers. Which packages would I have to uninstall to go back to a clean slate from which to install the older drivers I need?

[ElBrodino]

I don't see any vulkan drivers in that list. #2321

[dhh]

Yes, you currently need to manually install the vulkan drivers for Zed to get going. We'll bake that into the menu installer.

[ElBrodino]

Would this be a good candidate to make a migration script ?

[ElBrodino]

Also check Zed's chosen GPU in ~/.local/share/zed/logs/Zed.log under Using GPU:

[inad9300]

Oh, so I don't need to install the "nvidia-470xx" drivers for my old card?

Which packages would I have to install, then? If you don't mind me asking.

[ElBrodino]

If you want to use nvidia drivers, try to install the vulkan version of it
Here's the package:
vulkan-nouveau
#1441 (comment)
@inad9300 I have create a script that automates all this, but I lack feedback on the nvidia package.

[inad9300]

If possible, I would prefer proprietary drivers in this case, as I have heard performance is significantly worse with the open source ones. Do you have advice with respect to that?

If it helps, here is the output I get from lspci -k | grep -A3 -E "(VGA|3D|Display)" (note I needed to add -E to your command for it to work):

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 06)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device 3801
	Kernel driver in use: i915

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK107M [GeForce GT 755M] (rev a1)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device 3801

[inad9300]

After checking Arch's wiki on Vulkan, I'm rather confused by your suggestion, since they list vulkan-nouveau and nvidia-utils as alternatives, and I already have nvidia-utils installed, according to the output of yay -Qs nvidia. It feels odd to install vulkan-nouveau also.

I have very little knowledge about low-level graphics stuff, I should add.

[ElBrodino]

If it helps, here is the output I get from lspci -k | grep -A3 -E "(VGA|3D|Display)" (note I needed to add -E to your command for it to work):

Neat! You are right! This lspci command used as is would only return a true of false. It is far more useful in my auto installer script. Thanks for that, I'll backtrack my where I said that

[ElBrodino]

Hey don't sweat it. You can easily remove a driver if it doesn't work.
Vulkan is a framework, as collection of instruction if you will, akin to opengl, that softwares are reusing to display graphics. Most likely only zed would be using it.

[inad9300]

Hey, thank you for all the help!

Here you go... Not very useful, I'm guessing 😅

$ cat ~/.local/share/zed/logs/Zed.log
2025-11-12T16:17:33+01:00 INFO  [zed] ========== starting zed version 0.211.6, sha unknown ==========
2025-11-12T16:18:12+01:00 INFO  [zed] ========== starting zed version 0.211.6, sha unknown ==========
2025-11-12T23:06:15+01:00 INFO  [zed] ========== starting zed version 0.211.6, sha unknown ==========
2025-11-15T00:21:27+01:00 INFO  [zed] ========== starting zed version 0.212.3, sha unknown ==========
2025-11-15T00:24:53+01:00 INFO  [zed] ========== starting zed version 0.212.3, sha unknown ==========
2025-11-15T00:26:13+01:00 INFO  [zed] ========== starting zed version 0.212.3, sha unknown ==========
2025-11-15T10:32:04+01:00 INFO  [zed] ========== starting zed version 0.212.3, sha unknown ==========

[ElBrodino]

I have looked at some more documentation about zed on discrete graphics : here and there's a line about checking what GPU is compatible with vulkan:
MESA_VK_DEVICE_SELECT=list vulkaninfo
Give is a go, mine looked like this:
selectable devices: GPU 0: 8086:9a49 "Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe Graphics (TGL GT2)" integrated GPU 0000:00:02.0

[inad9300]

Here is what mine looks like, unfortunately:

❯ MESA_VK_DEVICE_SELECT=list vulkaninfo

ERROR: [Loader Message] Code 0 : setup_loader_term_phys_devs:  Failed to detect any valid GPUs in the current config
ERROR at /usr/src/debug/vulkan-tools/Vulkan-Tools/vulkaninfo/./vulkaninfo.h:247:vkEnumeratePhysicalDevices failed with ERROR_INITIALIZATION_FAILED

Some additional output, in case it helps:

❯ ls /usr/share/vulkan/icd.d/

Permissions Size User Date Modified Name
.rw-r--r--   178 root 12 Nov 20:39   nouveau_icd.x86_64.json
.rw-r--r--   140 root 12 Nov 19:17   nvidia_icd.json

❯ cat /usr/share/vulkan/icd.d/nouveau_icd.x86_64.json

{
    "ICD": {
        "api_version": "1.4.318",
        "library_arch": "64",
        "library_path": "/usr/lib/libvulkan_nouveau.so"
    },
    "file_format_version": "1.0.1"
}

❯ cat /usr/share/vulkan/icd.d/nvidia_icd.json

{
    "file_format_version" : "1.0.1",
    "ICD": {
        "library_path": "libGLX_nvidia.so.0",
        "api_version" : "1.4.312"
    }
}

[inad9300]

OK, I went the path I originally thought to be the right one and tried installing the latest Nvidia drivers available for my old card, namely:

❯ yay -S nvidia-470xx-dkms nvidia-470xx-utils lib32-nvidia-470xx-utils

During the installation process, a few packages were found to be conflicting (presumably the newer drivers that don't work on my GPU) and, when asked, I chose to uninstall them.

After that, my discrete graphics card seems to be ready to use:

❯ MESA_VK_DEVICE_SELECT=list vulkaninfo
selectable devices:
  GPU 0: 10de:fcd "NVIDIA GeForce GT 755M" discrete GPU 0000:01:00.0

Unfortunately, I don't think I'll ever get Zed to work on it, as the Zed team reports support for aged cards like mine is unlikely: zed-industries/zed#17553 (comment).

However, I believe my original bug report still stands, and the process that selects GPU drivers should be fixed so that the right drivers are installed depending on the GPU (see https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA).

[ElBrodino]

Oh the hardware is specifically not supported by zed? Talk about an uphill battle!
I've seen it may be possible to run zed with software. It's slower, but how hard can it be to display text?
... on the other hand...
Give neovim a try! 🫡