Edit: “Updating to the legacy 580xx drivers doesn’t show me a desktop anymore”, just in case someone else can stumble upon this by searching something similar.

Thanks to @deadcade@lemmy.deadca.de and @Ooops@feddit.org I did try fixing it out of curiosity. I had forgotten to install linux-headers. Hopefully someone who actually has the same problem as me, and needs to fix it, can use the tips given in the comments. On my end, I just had to install linux-headers and one reboot later it worked.

Always check if you have all needed packages and don’t just “remember” that you had them installed.

  • deadcade@lemmy.deadca.de
    1·
    4 days ago

    You need a couple things:

    • The kernel driver (dkms)
    • Userspace component
    • Kernel headers (for dkms)

    First get your kernel headers, this is easy enough, but varies based on which kernel you have installed. The format of the package name is {kernel}-headers. If you have the linux kernel, get linux-headers. If you have linux-lts, get linux-lts-headers. If you’re not sure on this, the command pacman -Q | grep linux searches for installed packages containing linux in the name. If you have multiple kernels installed, get the headers for all of them.

    Then install (from AUR) at least nvidia-580xx-dkms (display out) and nvidia-580xx-utils (Acceleration, like 3D and video decoding). If you have Steam or play Windows games under Wine, be sure to get lib32-nvidia-580xx-utils too.

    Also of note is the order in which you install things. Having the kernel headers installed is important for the DKMS modules to install succesfully. If you already have nvidia-580xx-dkms but were missing your kernel headers, you should reinstall it after installing your kernel headers.