How to Install NVIDIA Drivers on EndeavourOS: Easy

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 and today I am fixing/installing NVIDIA drivers on my Upstairs Workstation’s EndeavourOS installation. Let’s get started!

Short Answer

EndeavourOS has an NVIDIA installation script in the repository. It worked beautifully with my GTX 970, but I gather I am on the older side.

sudo pacman -S nvidia-inst
nvidia-inst

See the official EndeavourOS site for more information: https://discovery.endeavouros.com/nvidia/new-nvidia-driver-installer-nvidia-inst/2022/03/ [1].

Project Background

To my readers installing NVIDIA: I bid you good luck and look forward to hearing about your experience. I found precious few relevant search results about this topic aside from EndeavourOS’s admittedly confusing site, and my hope is that I’ve pointed you in the correct direction. If that doesn’t work, I have another of their articles in my Works Cited.

For my regular readers: wow. I don’t have many first attempt projects. Granted, this is technically a well-researched second attempt. One draft only had 100 words between title, introduction, and delivery (down to 75 in this cut, according to LibreOffice Writer). For now, I am thankful I didn’t have to learn what all the hype is about firsthand over installing NVIDIA on Arch .

EndeavourOS went on very smoothly earlier this year until after I installed Steam. My boot sequence would then stop updating where it normally hands over operations to the graphical server. The community helped me trace the problem to repository-installed drivers. I had to use the camera from the lab’s photo booth for pictures of TTY terminals. I let the project go dormant for a month while I focused on Nextcloud, but then Manjaro filled up its hard drive again while updating, and I was out of stuff to offload. (After I finished research this week, I installed Filelight and noticed several unused Proton versions taking up space.)

Listed in EndeavourOS’ features is “Nvidia installer.”

“A terminal-operated app that lets you easily install the right Nvidia driver and/or hybrid set-up required for your machine” [2]

Every other item on this feature list came pre-installed. Over the course of a couple late-night hours, I learned first about an older script called nvidia-intro. It reportedly works with cards made around 2010 and newer, such as the GeForce 930 [3]. I bounced around among what forum offerings my search turned up before settling on the link I shared from the start. Once installed, it was completely automatic. It needed a root password for installation proper, but the script itself does not run as root.

Takeaway

Normally, I would have combined this and next week’s similarly short topic since I am again working on my Upstairs Workstation. However, thinking about it from the perspective of someone searching online for help, it makes the most sense to split them.

Final Question

Have you done battle to install video drivers? I would like to hear about it in the comments below or on my socials.

Works Cited

[1] Manuel, “New Nvidia driver installer, nvidia-inst,” endeavouros.com, March 31, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://discovery.endeavouros.com/nvidia/new-nvidia-driver-installer-nvidia-inst/2022/03/ [Accessed April 10, 2023].

[2] B. Poerwoatmodjo, J. Kamprad, and Manuel, EndeavourOS, “Welcome to EndeavourOS”endeavouros.com, [Online]. Available: https://endeavouros.com [Accessed April 10, 2023].

[3] Joekamprad, “Nvidia intro,” endeavouros.com, Mar. 9, 2021. [Online]. https://discovery.endeavouros.com/nvidia/nvidia-intro/2021/03/ [Accessed April 10, 2023].