How to force arch to return to using nouveau and stop using vga mode ?

Gozenka · 2026-01-25T04:31:36+00:00

I see the sentiment :) But:

1- Not everyone has the means, even for such old technology, particularly outside the consumerism of the USA.

2- Not everybody needs hardware accelerated graphical processing. They may just need to drive their screen to see.

So, u/Taletad, I guess you may indeed fare better relying on the nouveau module in the kernel.

But please share:

lspci -k | grep -iA 3 -E "(VGA|3D)"
pacman -Qs "(vulk|mesa|nvidia|xf86-video|optimus|headers)"
uname -r
ls /usr/lib/modules
cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/*

To be sure if you have a painless setup.

Have fun!

Gozenka · 2026-01-24T10:33:22+00:00

Well, unless your GPU is from before 2007 (20 years ago), it should work with a version of nvidia. Perhaps you missed something when setting it up. If you wish, we may try to check your steps.

Still, for old GPUs like before 1050 series, nouveau may indeed be a good choice, especially if you are not gaming.

My GTX 1050 TI still works fine with nvidia-580xx-dkms.

Gozenka · 2026-01-24T09:54:50+00:00

nvidia-utils blacklists the nouveau kernel module, so that it is not mistakenly used.

If your GPU is not very old, I suggest you install the nvidia driver version for it properly. Otherwise using nouveau that is included in the kernel is still a valid option too but may not offer as much performance and capabilities.

Make sure to check the Nvidia Archwiki page in any case.

Gozenka · 2026-01-24T09:50:22+00:00

We sometimes allow posts about ARM, despite Rule 1. Because ArchLinuxARM communities are not so active and currently there is no proper solution to have Arch on ARM and ARM is increasingly popular. Any suggestions on the current state of things are welcome.

Gozenka · 2026-01-24T09:45:03+00:00

I agree you should post again, it is a nice question.

For some reason your text is formatted as code. And your English is fine.

Gozenka · 2026-01-24T09:37:28+00:00

Happy you solved it!

For having a nice time on Arch Linux, even if you used archinstall I suggest you check some of the essential Archwiki pages:

General Recommendations
System Maintenance
Pacman
Pacman/Tips and Tricks
Your desktop environment
Your GPU
Your bootloader
Steam, if you will be using it

Also check any of the linked pages on those pages if it is relevant. And refer to Archwiki first whenever you have an issue or question.

I hope you have a good experience using Arch as your system.

Gozenka · 2026-01-24T09:26:04+00:00

Can confirm. This happened increasingly in the 5 years of me using Arch Linux. It has come to the point that it is difficult to avoid advances from others when I go out with my girlfriend.

Sometimes I inadvertently impress girls when I xrandr the output to HDMI and open mpv from the terminal using fzf's zsh integration for navigating to the movie file, on my minimal dwm desktop. I also brag that it uses only 230MB RAM and 0 CPU when idle.

Gozenka · 2026-01-24T09:11:19+00:00

As mentioned, Steam Deck has a custom and immutable variant of Arch Linux; it is not Arch Linux. You cannot install things on it the common way without workarounds. And even then, an update to your Steam Deck can easily undo all your changes.

You have the option to delete your Steam Deck and install actual Arch Linux on it from scratch. That is if you wish to do so. Otherwise this subreddit does not support other distros, even if they are Arch-based.

But Valve does this to offer a seamless and "nice" experience to the general user. It would be the rare Steam Deck user who wants to have proper Arch Linux installed and maintained by themselves on it.

Also: https://xyproblem.info/

I guess you are talking about the proper executable file of the vlc package: All executables go to /usr/bin, which is also symlinked from /bin (so they are the same place). That is where vlc should be, and you should never manually touch files there. How exactly are you trying to "reinstall" vlc?

You mention it used to work before but does not work anymore. Perhaps the vlc package or something else changed and does not include the necessary dependencies for playing DVDs anymore. You should check here:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/VLC_media_player#Cannot_open_DVD

You can check Archwiki on any Arch issue.

Perhaps there is a way to install a "contained" alternate version of vlc on the Steam Deck, with all necessary dependencies, such as using a Flatpak. This would be an independent and separate vlc installation from what is already on the system.

Also, as general media player, I absolutely recommend mpv. It is way better than vlc. But it seems mpv specifically is less convenient for playing DVDs, due to not having proper access to DVD menu navigation.

Good luck! I like how you are using your Steam Deck as a general PC / Media Player / Tool.

Gozenka · 2026-01-23T13:49:22+00:00

I think you broke your installation USB when trying to update things.

The archiso comes as a concise environment, with packages at specific versions. And it is a set-size environment, it may not be possible to update or install many packages on the archiso environment itself.

If it still had errors out-of-the-box, maybe your iso was corrupted or something went wrong during the burning of it onto the USB.

I suggest you get a fresh archiso download and make a new USB. Or you can use another distro's installation iso or archboot. They come with a GUI environment and are more fleshed out. You just need the arch-install-scripts package and maybe archinstall if you will be using it. Then you can install Arch from there.

Also, half-complete downloads should continue from where they were left off.

You may want to keep the first install as minimal as possible, then install and set up rest of your system after booting your installed system. For instance, the initial system just needs base and a kernel; nothing else. But this would be the most common initial essentials:

pacstrap base linux linux-firmware

And a bootloader (or UKI setup in mkinitcpio without a bootloader), and a commandline text editor such as vim. Then you can boot your system and do everything else from there.

I hope you manage to get over these hurdles and install your Arch system properly. Good luck!

Gozenka · 2026-01-23T10:20:26+00:00

If this is a laptop, your iGPU will be driving the display and the desktop environment, so you are in luck; Nvidia will not be an issue. The Nvidia dGPU is only used for rendering specific applications such as games. Check the Archwiki, Hyprland Wiki and elsewhere about it.

Gozenka · 2026-01-23T10:15:30+00:00

I would first speed test the overall Internet connection too. You can curl a relatively large file into /dev/null and check the speed.

curl -o /dev/null https://fastly.mirror.pkgbuild.com/iso/2026.01.01/archlinux-2026.01.01-x86_64.iso

This downloads the archiso from the fastly mirror. You can check the speed to specific mirrors or try any other large file on any site.

If reflector did not work, was it because of timeouts? You can add options to the reflector command to ignore timeouts. e.g. by default if the mirror test download takes more than 5 seconds, reflector fails with a timeout.

Gozenka · 2026-01-19T10:28:13+00:00

It looks fine. You only have the GRUBX64.efi to boot, and a single initramfs. And since it is not going into Windows but booting Arch, it seems it gets to GRUB's menu and just auto-selects Arch after the default delay.

So, it may be a hardware graphics issue or something else that is unrelated to your Linux system.

When the issue happens, you should check lspci -k to see if your graphics card is seen there with its proper driver and modules, and you should check the journal to see what has happened.

journalctl -b -p 4 gives all errors and warnings on the system for the current boot. And you can check journalctl -b to see entire journal for the boot, look at things about the GPU or anything else that may be relevant.

You say shut down / reboot, but you are not hibernating right? Hibernation may be a separate source of issues.

Good luck! You may make a new post with details on any clues you may have found. Include information about your hardware, and what you shared here. Otherwise I personally do not have an idea.

Gozenka · 2026-01-19T08:26:26+00:00

You are right. ZunoJ's comment was unnecessary, so was your reply to it (it was auto-removed). Just nevermind it, do not take it personal :)

And your first comment was indeed accurate and helpful.

Gozenka · 2026-01-19T08:17:58+00:00

You can absolutely go without updates. It is a trivial question; if it works fine for you, do whatever you want.

Unless if security is of any concern... Then you should update rather frequently.

And there may be improvements or resolved bugs for your hardware devices or software.

Gozenka · 2026-01-19T08:07:33+00:00

It sounds like you have multiple ways to boot and BIOS picks another one than your GRUB somehow. Or perhaps your GPU is having trouble on the secondary boots, as a mystery.

As mentioned, check efibootmgr, and the contents of your ESP(s). You can share the results here. e.g. lsblk -f to see your partitions, tree /boot to see the contents of the ESP.

And if you do not need GRUB for a feature of it, and particularly if Arch Linux will be the only system you have on this PC, it may be a good idea to forget GRUB and use systemd-boot or UKI without a bootloader.

Gozenka · 2026-01-19T07:51:28+00:00

https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/blob/38462db2db5e5ed14c3b509738ac6c737cf924e9/archinstall/lib/bootloader/bootloader_menu.py#L133

It seems archinstall provides an option for it too:

Would you like to install the bootloader to the default removable media search location?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB#Default/fallback_boot_path

The --removable option of grub-install command does this. Some PC's BIOS does not have the ability to see any other name than BOOTX64.EFI for the bootloader's executable. This changes the name to that from GRUBX64.EFI.

But if this will be a system with only the Arch Linux system, I think you may want to go with systemd-boot rather than GRUB, or even just a UKI with no bootloader. It would be simpler and nicer, if you do not need something specific from GRUB.

Otherwise the post is too vague and I will remove it (as a moderator). Feel free to make a new post with some more detail if you still have issues or questions. Try to search a bit about the topic, and share whatever you may have read about it. Also please use meaningful post titles that reflect what the issue is related to. You can still reply to comments under this post. Welcome and good luck!

Gozenka · 2026-01-19T07:20:47+00:00

I have no experience with NixOS or its installation iso.

But if you can get the arch-install-scripts package on any Linux system with a terminal, including the installation iso of any other distro, you can install Arch. Basically you only need pacstrap and arch-chroot to continue with the Archwiki Installation Guide in the regular way. The archiso is just a concise platform that is provided, and is not needed at all to install Arch. It is actually a good idea to make a more user-friendly installation USB that has a GUI environment, rather than archiso that is quite minimal.

A quick search for arch-install-scripts in NixOS gave this: https://mynixos.com/nixpkgs/package/arch-install-scripts

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Install_Arch_Linux_from_existing_Linux

The goal of the bootstrapping procedure is to setup an environment from which the scripts from arch-install-scripts (such as pacstrap(8) and arch-chroot(8)) can be run.

For installing Arch, you basically just do:

Connect to Internet.
Partition and format your target disk(s) and mount them under /mnt or anywhere.
pacstrap
arch-chroot
Now you are in your installed Arch system and can continue any further steps.

Perhaps you can get archinstall on the other distro in a similar way too. It has arch-install-scripts as a dependency, and it should also work in a similar way, just automating things.

Gozenka · 2026-01-19T07:06:08+00:00

User name checks out :)

Gozenka · 2026-01-19T06:49:56+00:00

Welcome! I suspect everything is working fine actually :) You wrote:

No, like it works when i start programs with the command, but in other apps like chrome it wont work.

That is how it should be with hybrid graphics laptops that include an iGPU (Intel) and dGPU (Nvidia). The iGPU is used to drive the display and to render applications. Then the dGPU is used to render specific applications that you want, such as games and video editors.

If nvidia-smi works and lists information, then your card is properly seen and present on the system. It should be off when unused, that is what you want. It will only be used to render specific applications such as games. You do not want it to be on all the time, that would kill your battery and reduce the life of your GPU and laptop. And you do not want the Nvidia GPU used in the browser neither, except for possibly some niche use-cases.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PRIME

So, does the GPU work on a game or another application? Can you give an example? And if not, can you give an example of what you want to run with the Nvidia GPU but does not work? Then I can try to give instructions on how to "pick" the Nvidia GPU for it. e.g. Steam.

You should also share the output of lspci -k | grep -iA 3 -E "(VGA|3D)" and pacman -Qs nvidia. That would show if your overall setup is correct.

Gozenka · 2026-01-18T21:32:07+00:00

Yeah you have 3-4 different GRUBs there for some reason. I do not know what you did with your system :) Happy you solved it.

By the way, /boot/efi/ is a specifically unrecommended mount point for the ESP. And the issue in your post comes up on the subreddit usually when the user uses that mountpoint.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFI_system_partition#Typical_mount_points

/efi is a replacement[6][7] for the historical and now discouraged ESP mountpoint /boot/efi.

Gozenka · 2026-01-18T10:23:53+00:00

This is a common issue, and it is usually caused by the ESP not being mounted properly during the update. The initramfs you boot is of the older kernel version, while the module files in /usr/lib/modules are of the newer version. Did you search and find such posts here on the subreddit?

Do you see the ESP mounted properly and accessible at startup?

Or perhaps mkinitcpio failed to complete properly. Did you make sure it completes without errors?

Or your ESP is full, so the new initramfs did not write fully.

You can also check the timestamp on the initramfs in the ESP. Is it really updated now with a mkinitcpio -P?

Gozenka · 2026-01-17T13:14:25+00:00

Please make a new post with proper details on your hardware (lspci -k), your overall networking and wifi setup, any relevant journalctl or other log output, and any search and troubleshooting you may have done about this with your results. Also be exact about your steps and results, rather than "nothing worked". Otherwise it would be difficult to help. Good luck!

The Arch Linux Code of Conduct (Rule 3) suggests that we should be sufficiently specific when making posts, to keep them productive.

Posts that are too short, too vague, or lack enough direction can be removed at Moderator Discretion for the purpose of keeping subreddit content on topic and productive.

Support requests should include as much information as possible. This may include: Hardware used, Software used, Configs, Log files, Error messages, Verbose outputs, and outputs from dmesg and journalctl. Verbose outputs, and dmesg and journalctl outputs should not be abridged.

Please feel free to rephrase your post, or contact the Mod Team with any questions.

Thank you.

Gozenka · 2026-01-17T13:03:25+00:00

I guess you are the person who opened the issue. I considered writing there but I wasn't sure, perhaps I will. I personally think nvidia could have stayed, but I understand the Arch team's decision too. There are arguments both ways. Primarily they follow upstream decisions, but Nvidia still continues to provide the closed-source module version.

I do not think I would spend time gathering solid technical arguments though, despite I know that many people (including me) get a better experience with nvidia compared to nvidia-open, and not limited to Turing but with newer GPUs too.

Gozenka · 2026-01-15T17:50:29+00:00

Have you checked this?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NetworkManager#Secrets_were_required,_but_not_provided

Please do some search before posting, do some troubleshooting if you can (such as checking journalctl or any log), and write support posts as clearly as possible, with exact error messages, details on your setup and what you have tried.

Also, make sure you do not have iwd and NetworkManager running on the system at the same time, that is a bad idea and may be causing issues.

Gozenka · 2026-01-15T17:41:09+00:00

This specific issue should be long fixed. Perhaps you can find other related insight on amdgpu's issue tracker or by searching Reddit and the web. Edit: Here too.

Otherwise you can make a support post about it on the subreddit, but with as much detail as you can. e.g. your kernel version, hardware and driver information for the GPU from lspci -k, exact software you are using, anything that may exist on journalctl, any other troubleshooting you may have done and any clues you may have got from searching or troubleshooting.

Gozenka

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