Plasma/Wayland/Nvidia
Here's how to run with the proprietary Nvidia driver on Wayland:
Prerequisites
To use the Plasma Wayland session:
- Use an up-to-date version of Plasma (explicit sync support was implemented in 6.1)
- Ensure a reasonably new NVIDIA driver:
- minimum supported by KWin is 495.44;
- XWayland apps are usable with 555 and newer.
- You need to have the Nvidia EGL library installed. It can be a separate package (
libnvidia-egl-wayland1) or bundled with the driver package (e.g. `nvidia-gl-G06` on openSUSE since 555). - To run XWayland apps without flickering, at least XWayland 24.1 is required.
Use the modesetting driver
Check whether the driver is running in modesetting mode:
cat /sys/module/nvidia_drm/parameters/modeset
It should print “Y”. If not, modify your kernel command line and add the line nvidia_drm.modeset=1.
Search for “kernel parameters” in your distribution; https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Kernel_parameters is a good starting point.
It is also possible to pass the parameter via module configuration:
echo options nvidia_drm modeset=1 | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia_drm.conf
You need to regenerate the initramfs in case your distribution provides the graphics drivers in initramfs (e.g. sudo update-initramfs -u)
Login
- Select “Plasma (Wayland)” from your login manager
- Enjoy your beautiful super-fast accelerated Wayland desktop!
Known Limitations
- Night Color is not applied to the mouse cursor: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=479889
- Poor performance on external screens on hybrid GPU setups when using NVIDIA GPU as a secondary GPU because it requires CPU copying from the primary GPU to the secondary GPU (see https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/merge_requests/1031, https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=452219)