Switching between free and non-free Nvidia
When starting a KaOS live session you are presented with the option to run with free (default) or non-free graphics drivers. The choice made there, carries over to the installed system. There might be times you wish to switch to the other option than the one originally chosen (or if you missed the choice in Live). Please follow the steps needed as explained next (first section explains free to non-free, second the reverse order).
Switching from free to non-free
As always, before installing or changing packages, make sure your system is fully updated:
sudo pacman -Syu
Next remove libgl, it is needed by many applications, so you need to use -Rdd to avoid dependency checking:
sudo pacman -Rdd libgl
Remove the nouveau package:
sudo pacman -R xf86-video-nouveau
Time to install the non-free packages:
sudo pacman -S nvidia
If you use the linux-next kernel:
sudo pacman -S nvidia nvidia-next
If you have an older card (G8x, G9x, and GT2xx GPUs or earlier):
sudo pacman -S nvidia-340xx
This will automatically install nvidia-utils too, which has it’s own version of libgl included. If you want to use the GUI for nvidia, add nvidia-settings to what you install, this pulls in gtk2, so it is packaged separately.
After all is installed, reboot to load the new driver.
Switch from non-free to free
Especially with the changes coming with linux 3.12, it is strongly recommended to at least try the free nouveau driver. For those on hybrid graphics card, it should now offer as good or better an option as bumblebee.
Remove the nvidia packages, it needs the -Rdd command, since nvidia-utils includes libgl, needed by many packages. Check what nvidia packages you have installed with pacman -Qs nvidia.
sudo pacman -Rdd nvidia nvidia-utils
Add nvidia-next or nvidia-settings to the above line if the pacman -Qs nvidia command showed those too.
Install the needed free packages:
sudo pacman -S libgl xf86-video-nouveau
After those are installed, reboot to load the new drivers.