NVIDIA
NVIDIA drivers, checked and working.
Which driver Cyclop OS uses for an NVIDIA card, how to confirm it is the one in charge, and what to know on a laptop that has both an Intel and an NVIDIA chip.
Which driver you get
Gaming edition: the installer sets up the signed NVIDIA driver for you through ubuntu-drivers, with the 32-bit libraries games need. No command to type.
The Cyclop kernel (Patch 3) comes with the NVIDIA 595 open driver, as modules built and signed for that exact kernel. They are not rebuilt on your machine, so there is no extra key to enrol on top of the Cyclop one.
Other editions, and the Ubuntu kernel: Software and Updates, tab Additional Drivers, lists the proprietary driver for your card. The graphics page of the help centre shows the steps.
Signed modules for the older NVIDIA 580 and 470 drivers are not built for the Cyclop kernel yet. If your card needs one of those, keep the Ubuntu kernel, which stays in the boot menu.
Check which driver is running
nvidia-smi comes with the driver. If it prints a table with the name of your card and a driver version, the driver is loaded and talking to the card.
If it answers that it could not communicate with the driver, the driver is not loaded: go to the last section.
nvidia-smi
lspci | grep -iE "vga|3d"
ubuntu-drivers devices
lspci lists every graphics chip the computer has. ubuntu-drivers devices shows the driver Ubuntu recommends for the card and which one is installed.
See what the card is doing
nvidia-smi also lists the programs currently using the card, with their memory. It is the quickest way to know whether a game really runs on the NVIDIA chip and not on the built-in one.
Run it once with nothing open, then again while the game runs, and compare.
nvidia-smi
watch -n 1 nvidia-smi
Laptops with two graphics chips
Many laptops pair an Intel chip with an NVIDIA one. The Intel chip draws the desktop and saves battery, the NVIDIA one is there for games and heavy work. On our own test laptop, an HP Victus 15 with an Intel UHD chip and a GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop, the built-in screen is wired to the Intel chip and the HDMI port to the NVIDIA one.
To run one program on the NVIDIA chip, NVIDIA documents two environment variables for render offload. Put them in front of the command.
__NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer"
The line it prints should name your NVIDIA card. These are NVIDIA’s own variables: we have not tested this exact command on every card.
If nvidia-smi finds nothing
First check Secure Boot. A driver module that is not signed with a key the firmware trusts is refused, and nvidia-smi then fails. The Secure Boot guide covers the Cyclop key; the commands there show the state.
Then check that you are on a kernel the driver was built for: uname -r gives the running one. After a kernel update, restart once before concluding anything.
On the Ubuntu kernel, reinstall the recommended driver with ubuntu-drivers, restart, and run nvidia-smi again.
Still stuck: ask on the forum with the output of nvidia-smi, lspci and uname -r. Those three lines are what we need.
sudo ubuntu-drivers install