Solved [SOLVED] Why do I have NVIDIA drivers when I have no NVIDIA hardware?

[909mjolnir]

I wish any of this could explain to me why I get NVIDIA drivers installed on my Intel GPU computer (no NVIDIA anywhere on this system according to hardware auditing and HP specs). I think Manjaro is installing NVIDIA by default(?) I manually removed them and manually installed some Intel GPU driver(s), but it's confusing. I don't even know what the open source ones are called, but I tried to install those at one point too. I'm an amateur when it comes to that stuff.

 

[KGIII]

why I get NVIDIA drivers installed on my Intel GPU computer

Are you sure they're drivers?

This is VERY MUCH a shot in the dark...

I'm not at that computer right now but I have a Linux Mint box that curiously comes with support for, and enabling at start up, NVIDIA Prime. That system has no NVIDIA bits in it. I certainly didn't add it. I certainly didn't tell it to add it to the start up applications, but it's there and it does.

I've never looked into why it's there. I don't really care. It has been there for as long as Mint has been installed. I assume there's a reason for it.

So, are you maybe seeing the same thing on your distro?

Also, this might be better off as your own thread. I'm going to split these comments off to a new thread.

 

[KGIII]

I'm going to split these comments off to a new thread.

Done.

Thread moved to the hardware section of the forum, putting this post into its own thread.

 

[f33dm3bits]

It will probably be useful to see what hardware you have in your system. Can you share the output of the following?

inxi -e

 

[kc1di]

What distro are you using? Some distros just do a shot gun approach to support for hardware that is they load everything just in case.

 

[Brickwizard]

You dont need to have NVIDIA hardware, almost anything on your motherboard may have an Nvidia chip in it [they are one of the world's biggest chip manufacturers]

 

[CaffeineAddict]

What distro are you using?

He's using Manjaro IIRC.

 

[KGIII]

I think Manjaro is installing NVIDIA by default(?)

 

[dos2unix]

Steam, Proton can use nvidia overlays in some cases for Proton and Steam.

Most Localized Ai tries to use nvidia cuda libraries.

 

[909mjolnir]

What distro are you using? Some distros just do a shot gun approach to support for hardware that is they load everything just in case.

I think this might be the case.
I'm marking the first post as SOLVED.

Also, what Brickwizard said might be true also, although I thought if there was anything NVIDIA it would show up in the hardware audit. The whole system is HP/Intel.

 

[KGIII]

I'm actually using Mint right now, so I'll screenshot what I was referring to earlier in the thread - as it may be the reason.

I don't have anything 'NVIDIA' in the system. Until just recently, I hadn't bothered with a dedicated graphics card for a long time as it simply made no sense for me to do so.

 

[osprey]

I wish any of this could explain to me why I get NVIDIA drivers installed on my Intel GPU computer (no NVIDIA anywhere on this system according to hardware auditing and HP specs). I think Manjaro is installing NVIDIA by default(?) I manually removed them and manually installed some Intel GPU driver(s), but it's confusing. I don't even know what the open source ones are called, but I tried to install those at one point too. I'm an amateur when it comes to that stuff.

Some observations on nvidia elements on a system follow.

Manjaro has the package linux-firmware in its repos which is a large package of around 4000 files which includes firmware for many different hardware requirements including nvidia, intel, amd, realtek etc. Since this package is usually installed, some nvidia firmware files will be installed regardless of the hardware on the machine.

Sometimes a distro includes packages which are made up of parts of the linux-firmware package broken into smaller packages of specific sets of firmware, like: firmware-nvidia..., firmware-amd-graphics, firmware-realtek etc. but it appears in Manjaro that such a package is not available for nvidia firmware, so they use the larger linux-firmware package to cover the field. That would explain why a machine without any nvidia components like an nvidia graphics card, would have some nvidia files in the installation.

One can discover the nvidia files by inspecting the /lib/firmware directory directly and view the nvidia subdirectory there or run a search like the following:

$ locate nvidia
/usr/lib/firmware/nvidia
/usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/ad102
/usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/ad102/gsp
/usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/ad102/gsp/booter_load-535.113.01.bin
<snip>

Bear in mind that firmware and drivers are distinct elements. Firmware is tiny code which loads to a device on bootup, whereas drivers are modules in the kernel itself like graphics card drivers. A machine without nvidia graphics wouldn't normally load nvidia graphics drivers because the kernel wouldn't see any nvidia graphics hardware to load the drivers for, so the presence of nvidia firmware or graphics drivers wouldn't affect performance, rather just consume storage.

 

[909mjolnir]

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you guys.
Thanks for the comprehensive explanations.
I couldn't find any explanation anywhere else.

I didn't even know until osprey explained that firmware and drivers, drivers and firmware aren't the exact same thing(s).

After I removed some NVIDIA items from within octopi (pacman frontend), and installed some stuff that matches my Intel GPU, they haven't come back yet.

I am, indeed, on Manjaro 25 XFCE Linux v6.14
What you guys stated I think thoroughly explains the wierdness.

I will TRY not to spam the forum with unneeded entries.

 

[kc1di]

we are glad you got it sorted and please do not be a stranger here. We like helping whenever we can. Enjoy!

 

[f33dm3bits]

I just got curious and I installed Manjaro in a vm and chose to boot with opensource drivers and then installed. Here's the list of nvidia packages that are preinstalled.

[maarten@manjaro ~]$ pacman -Q | grep nvidia
mhwd-nvidia 570.133.07-2
mhwd-nvidia-390xx 390.157-19
mhwd-nvidia-470xx 470.256.02-10
nvidia-driver-assistant 0.20.124.06-1

So it seems Manjaro installs them by default. So it seems to be what @kc1di mentioned.

Some distros just do a shot gun approach to support for hardware that is they load everything just in case.