Hi all
I’ve just installed a new video card using the nvidia drivers in the community repository. I have in the past with nvidia had boot problems when anything changes. So the question I’d appreciate help on is: If in the future I get a prompt from Software Updates for either a kernel or nvidia driver update, can I just click yes, go ahead, and expect everything to work?
Regards
Fred
Normally yes.
Kernel updates should be compatible on Leap, and not require an update to installed kernel modules anyway.
And the new kernel should just pick up modules/driver installed for the old one.
That only applies for standard updates though, and not if you e.g. install completely different kernels from non-standard repos.
If something does go wrong for whatever reason, you should still be able to boot the previous kernel via “Advanced Options” in the boot menu.
Yeah, this is a fresh install of LEAP 15.2 with the kernel that came with the image, so that all sounds good. Many thanks wolfi.
An occasional problem with nvidia may still happen, e.g. see here https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/541603-New-nvdia-drivers-sluggish-mouse-and-screen-behavior?p=2946082#post2946082
Those problems are generally sorted out in a matter of days, but if you are concerned about a vital system you may delay the update for a few days or be sure to have a backup of the prior driver and keep the prior kernel, just in case.
And scan the Hardware subforum to look for alerts if still in doubt.
Yes, there’s no guarantee that an update may not have bugs or cannot introduce problems… (that’s not even specific to the nvidia driver either)
But if you use btrfs for the system partition (as is the default), you should easily be able to revert updates in case of problems (in general).
https://doc.opensuse.org/documentation/leap/archive/15.0/reference/html/book.opensuse.reference/cha.snapper.html#sec.snapper.undo
Thanks for that. I can certainly hold off for a day or two before committing an update, as suggested.
Wow I never noticed that before. Just checked and found a list of “before and after” snapshots for my system. Excellent! 
As a quick follow-up to this topic, today I got security updates offered for xorg-x11-server and graphviz. I clicked on install and got the following health warning
WARNING: Nouveau DRI/3D driver selected.
This driver is considered experimental and is known to have issues with
applications that use certain 3D acceleration features of modern
NVIDIA hardware.
Symptoms include application crashes or lockups & crashes of your system's
graphical environment. Older Hardware and less demanding applications may work
just fine and do benefit from the Hardware acceleration features this driver
offers over software emulation.
Use of this driver is especially not recommended for use with the KDE Desktop
Environment or Qt-based Applications.
The hardware vendor potentially offers alternative drivers.
Please click "I agree" if you accept the risks that may come with the
installation of this driver. Choose "I disagree" to prevent installation
of the driver and use software emulation instead.
I’ve found some references to this but the advice given all relates to how to disable these modules since the OPs are saying they don’t even use NVidia.
My problem is that I DO use an NVidia card and and KDE, and as I mentioned originally I simply installed the nvidia drivers I found in the community repo. So how should I react to this message? Should i update or not?
Regards
Fred
If you installed the proprietary driver correctly and it is working, the nouveau driver referenced in the warning should not even be loaded by the system, so it is safe to update despite the warning.
You can lock the nouveau driver beforehand so that it will never be installed, or uninstall and then lock it if the update insists on installing it.
There are few systems that can benefit from that nouveau driver nowadays, most modern systems will happily work with the modesetting driver when the proprietary Nvidia driver is not installed.
That’s great, thanks for your help.
Fred
But that “warning” is about Mesa-dri-nouveau, which is needed for OpenGL acceleration also if the modesetting driver is used (not just nouveau).
I.e. you need to install it if you want hardware-accelerated 3D/OpenGL, otherwise the system will use the software renderer which is slow of course.
It indeed doesn’t matter though if the nvidia driver is installed, as that comes with its own (proprietary) OpenGL support.