Graphics Cards
Drivers for hardware accelerated desktop rendering, improving performance and fidelity.
The Linux graphics stack consists of several components, but the main component is the mesa package.
| Manufacturer | OpenGL | Vulkan | Video acceleration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intel | mesa |
vulkan-intel |
intel-media-driver, libva-intel-driver |
| AMD | mesa |
vulkan-radeon |
libva-mesa-driver |
| NVIDIA | mesa, nvidia |
nvidia-utils |
libva-mesa-driver, nvidia-utils |
Intel
pacman -S mesa vulkan-intel intel-media-driver libva-intel-driver
AMDGPU
pacman -S mesa libva-mesa-driver vulkan-radeon
Nvidia
Nouveau open source driver
pacman -S mesa libva-mesa-driver
yay -S nouveau-fw
Proprietary driver
pacman -S nvidia nvidia-utils
Early KMS
In order to enable early KMS with the prorprietary driver, you will need to take additional steps.
The kernel modules of the proprietary kernel module need to be included explicitly in the MODULES array of your /ets/mkinitcpio.conf file (or a drop-in config file under /etc/mkinitcpio.conf.d/):
MODULES=(nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm)
Additionally, remove the kms hook from the HOOKS array. This is to prevent the unintentional loading of the nouveau kernel module.
Enable Kernel Mode Setting
By default, the nvidia_drm kernel module does not enable Kernel Mode Setting (KMS). In order for Wayland compositors to function properly, KMS must be explicitly enabled via a kernel command line argument at boot:
nvidia_drm.modeset=1
NOTE: Refer to Boot Loader for how to add the parameter to your boot configuration.