Bug#1079569: nvidia-open-kernel-dkms: Bricked my laptop. Missing instructions?

[Marc Glisse]

On Sun, 15 Jun 2025, Andreas Beckmann wrote:

> If both nvidia-kernel-dkms and nvidia-open-kernel-dkms are installed, 
> nvidia-kernel-dkms takes precedence (this will likely change in the future in 
> favor of the open module). You can switch between them at runtime (and 
> without uninstalling any package) by running
>
>    update-glx --config nvidia
>
> and (not) selecting the alternative with -open in its name.
>
> This e.g. updates the alternatives to the config files which select the 
> actual module file names that get loaded when someone does
> 'modprobe nvidia' etc.
> Ideally reboot after update-glx.
>
> At least that's the theory how this was designed to work. I don't (want to) 
> have the hardware to actually test it ;-) But I'd like to get confirmation 
> whether the two dkms packages can co-exist and switched at runtime as 
> planned.

Thank you for describing the design. I just tried:
* I already have nvidia installed
* I install nvidia-open
-> things still work
* I use update-glx to select the open version
-> things still work

It is surprisingly difficult to find out which version is currently 
loaded, but I'll interpret "loading NVIDIA UNIX Open Kernel Module" from 
dmesg as a sign that I am indeed using the open version now. So I can 
(weakly) confirm what you said.

(I didn't try the last step which would be removing nvidia-kernel-support)

-- 
Marc Glisse