NVIDIA Drivers on AcreetionOS

AcreetionOS defaults to the open-source stack (Nouveau/NVK). Fine for desktops; gamers and compute users want the proprietary driver.

Pick your package

GPU Package

Turing+ (GTX 16xx, RTX 20xx/30xx/40xx/50xx)

nvidia (or nvidia-open — modern default upstream)

Kepler..Pascal (GTX 600–10xx)

nvidia-470xx-dkms style legacy branches from AUR

Very old (Fermi and earlier)

Stay on Nouveau — proprietary support ended

Check your card first:

lspci | grep -Ei 'vga|3d'

Standard install (single GPU)

sudo pacman -S nvidia nvidia-utils
sudo mkinitcpio -P        # rebuilds initramfs with the module
reboot

Verify afterwards: nvidia-smi should print your GPU and driver version.

Hybrid laptops (Intel/AMD + NVIDIA)

Use PRIME offload so the dGPU sleeps when idle:

prime-run glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer"    # forces NVIDIA for one app
glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer"              # default stays power-saving GPU

Prefix games/apps with prime-run to hand them the big GPU. The same pattern applies to every app you launch.

Wayland vs X11

  • X11: works out of the box.

  • Wayland (Cinnamon experimental): needs nvidia-drm.modeset=1:

    echo 'options nvidia_drm modeset=1 fbdev=1' | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf
sudo mkinitcpio -P && reboot

After kernel updates

The repo nvidia package rebuilds against the shipped kernel automatically via pacman hooks. DKMS legacy branches do the same. If boot lands at a black screen post-update, roll back per When an update misbehaves.

Uninstall / revert to open source

sudo pacman -Rns nvidia nvidia-utils
sudo pacman -S mesa vulkan-radeon   # or intel-media etc.
sudo mkinitcpio -P && reboot