When installing the proprietary nvidia driver recommended by the the official debian page for Debian Bookwork, apt seems to want to install a new kernel. I actually did this before (since this is my second time installing debian on here) and this new kernel messes with the display server somehow, disabeling all monitors but one, limiting the resolution, removing all the UI animations and so on. So I don’t want to do that again. My current kernel is the Debain 12 default: linux-image-6.1.0-18-amd64. Am I doing something terribly wrong, is the website perhaps outdated, or what is going on here?
The proprietary Nvidia driver has kernel modules that are specific to a single version of the Linux kernel. With pre-built packages that’s typically whatever the standard kernel is for your distro. If that kernel isn’t booted then you’ll have no graphics driver.
This is solved by DKMS, which will build those kernel modules for every kernel you have installed. You’ll need the kernel headers for the kernel you want to build for, as well as the
nvidia-kernel-dkmspackage which the wiki you linked only offhandedly mentions. Whenever the kernel or driver updates it should build the required modules.Oh yeah, I completely missed the DKMS. I just installed the nvidia-kernel-dkms package, and it seemed to try to build the module, but then failed:
Building for 6.1.0-18-amd64 Building initial module for 6.1.0-18-amd64 Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 6.1.0-18-amd64 (x86_64) Consult /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/525.147.05/build/make.log for more information. dpkg: error processing package nvidia-kernel-dkms (--configure): installed nvidia-kernel-dkms package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 10 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of nvidia-driver: nvidia-driver depends on nvidia-kernel-dkms (= 525.147.05-4~deb12u1) | nvidia-kernel-525.147.05 | nvidia-open-kernel-525.147.05 | nvidia-open-kernel-525.147.05; however: Package nvidia-kernel-dkms is not configured yet. Package nvidia-kernel-525.147.05 is not installed. Package nvidia-kernel-dkms which provides nvidia-kernel-525.147.05 is not configured yet. Package nvidia-open-kernel-525.147.05 is not installed. Package nvidia-open-kernel-525.147.05 is not installed. dpkg: error processing package nvidia-driver (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Errors were encountered while processing: nvidia-kernel-dkms nvidia-driver E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)It says that something hasn’t been configured yet, even though I am just installing it…
You’ll have to check the
make.logas the error states. Details for what went wrong will be in there. But it might be, that your kernel version simply isn’t supported by the driver.