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    #1

    [SOLVED] Can I switch graphics drivers without deinstalling?

    I have an HP Envy laptop with an NVIDIA GeForce MX150 graphics card. I noticed it was using a driver called "Nouveau" which I guess is the generic FOSS graphics driver.

    I installed the NVIDIA driver recently. I ran a graphics benchmark, and could see that framerates were about 2.5x what I got by disabling the graphics card entirely and using the built-in Intel graphics. But I neglected to run the test before installing the new driver. I'm curious to see if the proprietary driver really bought me any perf gains. Is there a way to tell the system to use Nouveau instead of the NVIDIA driver WITHOUT deinstalling the latter? Everything I could find with search engines seemed to say that I had to deinstall the other driver. Which I'd rather not do out of concern for breaking things.
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    #2
    sure you can do that. normally when you install a nvidia driver it will blacklist Nouveau because they can not be loaded at the same time. So if you want to run nouveau again you simply need to un blacklist it and blacklist the nvidia driver.
    You'll find the blacklisted modules in /etc/modeprob.d/blacklist.conf
    once you change the blacklist reboot and neaveau should be loaded again.
    Last edited by kc1di; Aug 04, 2018, 04:55 AM.
    Dave Kubuntu 20.04 Registered Linux User #462608

    Wireless Script: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...5#post12350385
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      #3
      When you get a successful NVIDIA install a GUI is included which allows you to switch between the two by checking a radio button, saving the config and rebooting.


      Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
      "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
      – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.
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        #4
        Originally posted by GreyGeek View Post
        When you get a successful NVIDIA install a GUI is included which allows you to switch between the two by checking a radio button, saving the config and rebooting.


        Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
        If you are talking about the Driver Manager in System Settings, that actually will uninstall the Nvidia driver.

        if you are talking about the Nvidia Settings program that will only switch between the Nvidia GPU and the system's built-in Intel graphics chip, if it has one. It will not swap drivers.
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          #5
          Can you please tell me how to find this GUI? I found one under KDE->Applications->System->Configure NVIDIA X Server Settings. On the main menu, there is a PRIME Profiles, with radio buttons for either NVIDIA or Intel GPU. That is how I was able to test the perf of the built-in GPU vs. the graphics card. But I didn't see any options for choosing drivers.

          Under KDE->System Settings there is a Driver Manager screen, which seems to have radio buttons for the two drivers. But switching didn't seem to have any effect.
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            #6
            Originally posted by claydoh View Post
            If you are talking about the Driver Manager in System Settings, that actually will uninstall the Nvidia driver.
            Will switching back reinstall the NVIDIA driver? That is, is the driver kept somewhere on my system? Or is it permanently gone, and I have to use apt-get to get it again? (If the former, where are driver files kept?)
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              #7
              Originally posted by Mister Pi View Post
              Will switching back reinstall the NVIDIA driver? That is, is the driver kept somewhere on my system? Or is it permanently gone, and I have to use apt-get to get it again? (If the former, where are driver files kept?)
              Using the radio buttons doesn't uninstall NVidia or Intel (the most common alternative), it just tells the application which GPU to fire up on the next reboot (or logout & login?). After I installed the NVidia driver I've only switched back to my Intel GPU once in the last three years.

              Click image for larger version Name: nvidia_select_screen.png Views: 1 Size: 101.0 KB ID: 643950
              "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
              – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.
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                #8
                Originally posted by GreyGeek View Post
                Using the radio buttons doesn't uninstall NVidia or Intel (the most common alternative), it just tells the application which GPU to fire up on the next reboot (or logout & login?)
                That's true, but this is not what the OP is asking (he actually did all that to test the difference between the nvidia GPU [with the nvidia driver] and the Intel Gpu).
                He is asking how to switch between the nvidia driver and the nouveau driver (for the nvidia GPU).
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                  #9
                  Originally posted by kc1di View Post
                  sure you can do that. normally when you install a nvidia driver it will blacklist Nouveau because they can not be loaded at the same time. So if you want to run nouveau again you simply need to un blacklist it and blacklist the nvidia driver.
                  You'll find the blacklisted modules in /etc/modeprob.d/blacklist.conf
                  once you change the blacklist reboot and neaveau should be loaded again.
                  I found a file /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-graphics-drivers.conf whose change date (according to stat) is around the time I installed the NVIDIA driver. The contents are:

                  blacklist nouveau
                  blacklist lbm-nouveau
                  alias nouveau off
                  alias lbm-nouveau off

                  So I guess I could hide this file. But I still need to blacklist the NVIDIA driver. Grep'ping for nvid in /etc/modprobe.d/* only found one line, in blacklist-framebuffer.conf:

                  blacklist nvidiafb

                  But the change date on that file is around the time I installed Kubuntu. Comments at the top of the file seem to indicate a general aversion to framebuffer drivers rather than a specific issue with NVIDIA's:

                  # Framebuffer drivers are generally buggy and poorly-supported, and cause
                  # suspend failures, kernel panics and general mayhem. For this reason we
                  # never load them automatically.

                  So I assume I could just make a counterpart to nvidia-graphics-drivers.conf to blacklist the nvidia drivers, like you said, but I'm not sure how. The driver is called nvidia-driver-390 but when I do "lsmod | grep nvid" I only get:

                  nvidia_uvm 757760 0
                  nvidia_drm 40960 2
                  nvidia_modeset 1110016 7 nvidia_drm
                  nvidia 14340096 890 nvidia_modeset,nvidia_uvm
                  drm_kms_helper 172032 2 i915,nvidia_drm
                  drm 401408 6 i915,nvidia_drm,drm_kms_helper
                  ipmi_msghandler 53248 2 nvidia,ipmi_devintf
                  Last edited by Mister Pi; Aug 04, 2018, 02:13 PM. Reason: typos
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                    #10
                    Originally posted by kubicle View Post
                    That's true, but this is not what the OP is asking (he actually did all that to test the difference between the nvidia GPU [with the nvidia driver] and the Intel Gpu).
                    He is asking how to switch between the nvidia driver and the nouveau driver (for the nvidia GPU).
                    How did I misinterpret “Can I switch between ... without uninstalling ...”?

                    That’s exactly what the two radio buttons allow.




                    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
                    "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
                    – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.
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                      #11
                      Originally posted by GreyGeek View Post
                      How did I misinterpret “Can I switch between ... without uninstalling ...”?

                      That’s exactly what the two radio buttons allow.
                      If I'm not mistaken, the screenshot you showed in your earlier post gives you the choice of using NVIDIA's GPU (with whatever driver goes with it) or the Intel CPU's built-in graphics. You could choose the latter to save power (so they claim), diagnose problems, or just to do the test I did earlier for the warm fuzzy. But what I want is to use NVIDIA's GPU, but with the Nouveau driver rather than NVIDIA's own driver.

                      All right, I should've benchmarked the graphics BEFORE installing the driver. I turned off the GPU using the NVIDIA config tool shown in your screenshot, rebooted, ran glmark2 and got a score of 2180. Turning the GPU back on gave me a glmark2 score of 4658. But when I tried the Driver Manager under System Settings, ticked the radio button for Nouveau, applied, and rebooted, I got a nearly identical glmark2 score (within the noise margin, I assume). Which led me to conclude either

                      1) I didn't really switch drivers; or
                      2) The Nouveau driver is as good as NVIDIA's proprietary driver; or
                      3) glmark2 doesn't stress graphics enough to show a difference.
                      Last edited by Mister Pi; Aug 04, 2018, 07:17 PM. Reason: typos
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                        #12
                        Originally posted by GreyGeek View Post
                        How did I misinterpret “Can I switch between ... without uninstalling ...”?
                        That’s exactly what the two radio buttons allow.
                        From the original post:
                        Is there a way to tell the system to use Nouveau instead of the NVIDIA driver WITHOUT deinstalling the latter?
                        That is switching between two alternate drivers for the nvidia GPU, not switching between two alternate GPUs (Intel or Nvidia)
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                          #13
                          You have to change the blacklist place a hash mark before #nouveau and it will be loaded on next boot.
                          Then you'll have to add Nvidia to the blacklist (blacklist nvidia) and it will not load the next boot.
                          when you want to switch back you # mark the nvidia entry and un# the nouveau entry.

                          That's the only way I know of without installing and uninstalling each time.
                          So your black list will look like this when using nouveau
                          #blacklist nouveau
                          blacklist nvidia
                          and like this when using Nvidia
                          blacklist nouveau
                          #blacklist nvidia

                          Good luck.
                          Last edited by kc1di; Aug 05, 2018, 03:21 AM.
                          Dave Kubuntu 20.04 Registered Linux User #462608

                          Wireless Script: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...5#post12350385
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                            #14
                            Originally posted by GreyGeek View Post
                            How did I misinterpret “Can I switch between ... without uninstalling ...”?

                            That’s exactly what the two radio buttons allow.

                            Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
                            Hi GG,

                            What your suggesting works fine if the switch is between Nvidia and intel but it won't work for Nouveau and Nvidia drivers.
                            as the can't be loaded at the same time.
                            Dave Kubuntu 20.04 Registered Linux User #462608

                            Wireless Script: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...5#post12350385
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                              #15
                              It may be possible to automate the process by having two kernel entries in the grub list , but i've never tried that. Or perhaps a bash script to make the change.
                              Good luck, Eventually you'll most likely settle on one or the other, the nvidia drivers have always worked best for me.
                              Dave Kubuntu 20.04 Registered Linux User #462608

                              Wireless Script: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...5#post12350385
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