Update wants to add kernel-firmware-nvidia

English Hardware
1

I just recently switched graphics driver from nvidia to amd. When I switched, I just removed all the nvidia packages and everything works fine (after I found that I had to add some vulkan stuff.)

With today’s update, it wants to (re)-add the kernel-firmware-nvidia package. Is this correct, or do I need to do something? Thanks.

2

This is because in a default installation you get kernel-firmware-all, which in turn recommends (soft-require) kernel-firmware-nvidia. If there’s a new version published it will bring back as a recommendation.

There’s a few ways to handle this:

  1. Remove kernel-firmware-all (and just that, specific firmwares will be kept)
  2. Disable installation of new recommended packages
  3. sudo zypper addlock kernel-firmware-nvidia

I have done both 1 and 2, and prefer to run sudo zypper inr --no-recommends to restrict to packages zypper thinks the system needs to support hardware.

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3

If so desired, you can make solution 2 the default with the following setting in /etc/zypp/zypp.conf:

##
## Whether only required packages are installed.
##
## Recommended packages, will not be regarded.
##
## Valid values: boolean
## Default value: false
##
solver.onlyRequires = true

See also: man zypper.

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4

Personally, I wouldn’t be too bothered…

It is as awerlang said, being installed as a result of “kernel-firmware-all”. You probably have several (many?) firmware packages that are not required by your existing hardware.

There is a bug report about the issue of unwanted firmware packages: 1207011 – kernel-default recommends kernel-firmware which will pull in kernel-firmware-all although there is no “easy” solution at the moment…

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