Plasma/Wayland/Nvidia: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 23:07, 26 February 2024

Here's how to run with the proprietary Nvidia driver on Wayland:

Prerequisites

To use the Plasma Wayland session:

Ensure that you are using Plasma 5.20.2 or later — preferably the latest stable release.
Ensure the NVIDIA driver is not older than version 495.44 — KWin is no longer compatible with previous versions.
You need an up-to-date Qt. Make sure you have >= Qt5.15.0 or 4bd13402f0293e85b8dfdf92254e250ac28094c7 cherry-picked.
Make sure to have the Nvidia EGL library installed. For example on Ubuntu and Neon the relevant package is called libnvidia-egl-wayland1

To use the Plasma Wayland session with hardware acceleration on XWayland apps, you need:

Xorg 1.20.12 or later.
XWayland 21.1.2 or later.
libxcb 1.1.7 or later.

Use the modesetting driver

Check our driver is running in modesettings 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)

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-Running Nvidia Wayland
+Here's how to run with the '''proprietary''' Nvidia driver on Wayland:
-=== Pre-requisites ===
+=== Prerequisites ===
-* You need a very up-to-date Qt. Make sure you have >= Qt5.15.0 or 4bd13402f0293e85b8dfdf92254e250ac28094c7 cherry-picked.
+To use the Plasma Wayland session:
-=== Mode setting===
+* Ensure that you are using Plasma 5.20.2 or later — preferably the latest stable release.
+* Ensure the NVIDIA driver is not older than version 495.44 — KWin is no longer compatible with previous versions.
+* You need an up-to-date Qt. Make sure you have >= Qt5.15.0 or [https://code.qt.io/cgit/qt/qtwayland.git/commit/?id=4bd13402f0293e85b8dfdf92254e250ac28094c7 4bd13402f0293e85b8dfdf92254e250ac28094c7] cherry-picked.
+* Make sure to have the Nvidia EGL library installed. For example on Ubuntu and Neon the relevant package is called <code>libnvidia-egl-wayland1</code>
-Check our driver is running in modesettings mode
+To use the Plasma Wayland session with hardware acceleration on XWayland apps, you need:
-"cat /sys/module/nvidia_drm/parameters/modeset"
+* Xorg 1.20.12 or later.
+* XWayland 21.1.2 or later.
+* libxcb 1.1.7 or later.
-It should print "Y"
+=== Use the modesetting driver===
+Check our driver is running in modesettings mode:
-If not, modify your kernel command line and add the line nvidia-drm.modeset=1.
+<code>cat /sys/module/nvidia_drm/parameters/modeset</code>
-Search for "kernel parameters" in your distribution
-https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Kernel_parameters is a good starting point
-=== Tell kwin to run with EGLStreams. ===
+It should print "Y". If not, modify your kernel command line and add the line <code>nvidia_drm.modeset=1</code>.
+Search for "kernel parameters" in your distribution; https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Kernel_parameters is a good starting point.
-You should set the environment variable "KWIN_DRM_USE_EGL_STREAMS=1"
+It is also possible to pass the parameter via module configuration:
-The easiest place is to add a file /etc/profile.d/kwin.sh  with the line
+<code>echo options nvidia_drm modeset=1 | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia_drm.conf</code>
-export KWIN_DRM_USE_EGL_STREAMS=1
-Verify this is working with the command line tool "env" after rebooting.
+You need to regenerate the initramfs in case your distribution provides the graphics drivers in initramfs (e.g. <code>sudo update-initramfs -u</code>)
 === Login ===
 * Select "Plasma (wayland)" from your login manager
+* Enjoy your beautiful super-fast accelerated wayland desktop!
-* 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)