Installing Nvidia driver

I’ve got a running system, but it seems to be using the open-source Nvidia driver rather than the proprietary one. I haven’t been able to work out how to switch to it. I’m running KDE on a default install of OpenSUSE Leap 15.1.

I’ve tried going into YaST and then software repositories to find the right repo and then installing the package but I’m not sure which is the right package to install,

Is something wrong with the one it’s now using?

There isn’t a “the” open-source NVidia driver. There’s the nouveau kernel module (1; driver) provided by the kernel, on which the two FOSS drivers depend, the modesetting DDX (2; upstream default; driver) provided by the X server, and the nouveau DDX (3; reverse-engineered; driver) provided by xf86-video-nouveau. To which do you refer?

If you examine /var/log/Xorg.0.log, you can readily tell which DDX is employed. There will be many many many lines containing whichever is in use, either modeset(, or nouveau(. It will also be shown in output of inxi -G. The kernel module employed can be found via lsmod output, via inxi -G output, and via lspci -v or -nnk output.

Thank you for your reply.

lsmod only gives nouveau as the output and /var/log/Xorg.0.log gives the modesetting driver. It does appear to try and load a driver called nv but it can’t locate it.

OK, that is he default install using the nouveau kernel driver and the modesetting video driver: what is wrong with it (or why do you want to switch to the proprietary driver)?
What you need to install depends on your system configuration, please show the result of the following command (paste it between CODE tags, use the # button above the editing line in the web interface):

sudo lspci -nnk | egrep 'VGA|3D' -A3

Please show


inxi -Gxxx

You may install inxi utility previously.

There is nothing wrong with the driver in Linux but when I am running a Windows 10 Pro virtual machine in VMWare Workstation Pro 15.5.1 it is terribly laggy. I get the feeling that it is because this driver does not support hardware acceleration in VMWare. Plus I’d like to be able to play some Steam games.

Output of the command:


01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GP104BM [GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile] [10de:1be1] (rev a1)
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device [1462:11af]
        Kernel driver in use: nouveau
        Kernel modules: nouveau


Resuming in non X mode: glxinfo not found. For package install advice run: inxi --recommends
Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA GP104BM [GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile]
           Display Server: x11 (X.org 1.20.3 )
           drivers: nouveau (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev,vesa)
           tty size: 88x29

I am no virtualization expert, but my understanding is that VMWare lagginess has nothing to do with nouveau or proprietary driver. What you are looking for requires a so called “HW passthrough” that may be very tricky and doesn’t work in all systems.
You may ask for help in the Virtualization subforum about that topic.

Output of the command:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GP104BM [GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile] [10de:1be1] (rev a1)
Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device [1462:11af]
Kernel driver in use: nouveau
Kernel modules: nouveau

To play games with that configuration you should follow the directions found here SDB:NVIDIA drivers - openSUSE Wiki

Have fun.

Awesome. Thank you very much. I’ve got it installed now. I’ll report back if I have any more problems.

Installing the drivers fixed the laggy problem I was having with my Windows 10 Pro virtual machine. I’m pretty happy with how things are running now.