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by **gregM** » Jan 27th, '26, 03:11

Not sure if this is the right place but here we go.
Notes on Installing Mageia10 Alpha1 on a HP Zbook 15 G4

I was using a USB HDD that boots Ventoy which has a bunch of .ISO installers including Alpha 10
Selecting the Magiea ISO to boot, all went well and the installer booted and ran just fine.

The issues I had were around the graphics cards selection and setup for X11/Wayland sessions.
The laptop has both Intel and Nvidia cards and I am not familiar with that setup (laptop just acquired).
I quite likely confused things by selecting the Nvidia interface in the install process.

The installer didnt list my exact model Nvida or Intel devices. I later found the MCC Hardware show the Intel display as HD Graphics 630 and the Nvidia as GM206GLM [Quadro M2200 Mobile]

So having a mismatch of installed Nvidia pkgs including dkms driver construction, boot failed to load them and didnt run or X sessions crashed.
Eventually found the kernel command line had nodkms set so had to remove that to see if Nvidia would come to life. No joy there.

Next I tried to use the Intel card, but not knowing all the nvidia pks needed to be removed before the intel module would come to life

There was no i915 module getting loaded not /dev/dri device available untill all trace of nvidia was stripped out.
So suggest that you ignore the Nvidia display adapter at install time!

Eventually got the Intel display working, though selecting some resolutions caused X sessions to fail.

Next I had X11 plasma running, but elements seemed missing mainly kwin pkgs that caused plasma windows to be missing titlebars, close buttons etc. Not closing or becoming ghosts at logoff, Also the plasma X11 setup was fussy on how the touchpad reacted , double clicks on controls not working...

Changing to Plasma-Wayland (after installing the pkgs) logon made that navigation work a lot better than Plasma-X11.

So now one of the bigger issues I see in Alpha10 on my Zbook, is browsing the Hardware list in MCC it will freeze after a time maybe after looking at 4 or 5 devices in the list the hardware view locks up...

Moral of this story might be to avoid Nvidia, even if sounds like a good idea..

by **gregM** » Jan 27th, '26, 10:31

Update on Nvidia issues with the Alpha release.
I have actually got my rpm pkgs sorted out, and have the set of magiea-prime and nvidia happily installed and attempting to switch between the Intel and Nvidia Cards.
X11 & Wayland X sessions now dont crash at boot time, dkms builds new init bits but not quite compatible with the Alpha10 kernel.

When using magiea-prime-install a reboot gets to the point where the X session reports it is 'Installing Nvidia Drivers', but that fails and it falls back to using the Intel cards.

So I can have both sets of Display adaptors coexisting, but the Nvidia ones dont build modules in a way the dkms can use. But now we always get an X session regardless

The following is an AI examination of where things fall over ....
------------------------------------------------------

Mageia 10 Alpha – NVIDIA / DKMS / mageia‑prime Failure Summary

Below is a concise technical explanation of the issue affecting NVIDIA hybrid‑GPU systems on Mageia 10 Alpha.
This outlines where the mismatches occur and the symptoms they produce.

1. DKMS builds the NVIDIA modules, but does not install them
DKMS successfully compiles all required NVIDIA modules. They appear under:

Code: Select all: /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/<version>/<kernel>/x86_64/module/

The built files include:

Code: Select all: nvidia-current.ko nvidia-modeset.ko nvidia-drm.ko nvidia-uvm.ko nvidia-peermem.ko

However, DKMS does not install these modules into the kernel’s module tree:

Code: Select all: /lib/modules/<kernel>/updates/dkms/

The updates/dkms directory is never created, and no NVIDIA modules are copied there.

Cause:
Mageia 10 Alpha’s DKMS expects compressed modules (.ko.xz), but the NVIDIA DKMS package still produces uncompressed .ko files.
Because the expected file format is missing, DKMS refuses to install the modules.

2. mageia‑prime attempts to load the wrong module name

mageia‑prime attempts to load:

Code: Select all: nvidia_current

But the actual module’s internal name is:

Code: Select all: nvidia

This produces errors such as:

Code: Select all: modprobe: ERROR: could not find module by name='nvidia_current'

Even when running:

Code: Select all: modprobe nvidia

the kernel cannot load the module because it was never installed into /lib/modules/....

3. Kernel never attempts to load the NVIDIA driver

Because the modules are missing from the kernel tree, dmesg contains no NVIDIA driver messages at all.
Only the NVIDIA HDMI audio device appears.

This means:

No attempt to load nvidia
No symbol mismatch errors
No invalid module format errors

The kernel simply has no module to load.

4. User-visible symptoms

mageia‑prime reports warnings about failing to load nvidia_current
Wayland and X11 always fall back to the Intel GPU
MCC shows a “custom graphics device”
Switching to NVIDIA mode appears to work, but the driver never activates
No NVIDIA DRM/KMS, no CUDA, no GL offload

5. Root cause summary

Mageia 10 Alpha currently has three mismatches:

A. DKMS module format mismatch

Kernel + DKMS expect .ko.xz
NVIDIA DKMS package produces .ko
DKMS refuses to install the modules

B. Module name mismatch

mageia‑prime tries to load nvidia_current

The actual module name is nvidia

C. Kernel module path missing

/lib/modules/<kernel>/updates/dkms/ is never populated

Kernel cannot see or load the NVIDIA driver

6. Consequence

Even though the NVIDIA driver builds successfully, it never becomes usable, and the system always runs on Intel graphics.

by **morgano** » Jan 27th, '26, 16:10

gregM wrote:Not sure if this is the right place but here we go.
Notes on Installing Mageia10 Alpha1 on a HP Zbook 15 G4

Right, it is often good to start discussing a problem on the forum.

You seem to like testing, searching and reporting.
Maybe you would like to join QA? Expecially for nvidia we are a bit short of testers, so it would be valuable.
When in QA you may also apply to get access to internal early ISOs - like currently we have beta1.
If interested, start reading here:
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/QA_Team
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/QA_Team_portal
You should register in the QA mail list (info how is in the link somewhere)
When you do, the questions like in this thread is a good place to put there among other testers.
And then open a bug with refined description.

browsing the Hardware list in MCC it will freeze after a time maybe after looking at 4 or 5 devices in the list the hardware view locks up...

Ah, you see that too. Please add a comment on https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35061

Moral of this story might be to avoid Nvidia, even if sounds like a good idea..

Maybe - the free drivers of today works well for most usage.

by **AstorBG** » Jan 28th, '26, 22:12

When you have optimus laptop i.e. with hybrid graphic cards, its not good idea to install the NVidia driver during the installation but rather install the integrated GPU, in your case Intel graphic card. If you get after the installation to Plasma, then udpate the system, reboot. Then go to MCC, Hardware, setup a graphical server and chose your nvidia series and follow the instructions in the GUI to install the nvidia GPU. Your nvidia card is a bit older so you might use the legacy driver (470 or something), Check this page https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia-prime_for_Optimus if you havent done so. Bare in mind that Mageia 10 is in alpha.

by **gregM** » Jan 29th, '26, 01:58

morgano wrote:
gregM wrote:Not sure if this is the right place but here we go.
Notes on Installing Mageia10 Alpha1 on a HP Zbook 15 G4

Right, it is often good to start discussing a problem on the forum.

You seem to like testing, searching and reporting.
Maybe you would like to join QA? Expecially for nvidia we are a bit short of testers, so it would be valuable.
When in QA you may also apply to get access to internal early ISOs - like currently we have beta1.
If interested, start reading here:
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/QA_Team
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/QA_Team_portal
You should register in the QA mail list (info how is in the link somewhere)
When you do, the questions like in this thread is a good place to put there among other testers.
And then open a bug with refined description.

Thanks for the infomation on the QA team, I will consider how I might be of use

browsing the Hardware list in MCC it will freeze after a time maybe after looking at 4 or 5 devices in the list the hardware view locks up... Ah, you see that too. Please add a comment on https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35061

Yes logged that at bugzilla, and now see a fix has been suggested ... That did the trick for me and now the hardware list endless loop does not happen... Interesting that loop occurred every time I ran drakhardware but sometimes it did not happen for you.

Moral of this story might be to avoid Nvidia, even if sounds like a good idea..

Maybe - the free drivers of today works well for most usage.

I did no background checking on the Nvidia display adapter in an 'Optimus' laptop. I only got the HP Zbook last week and had no idea of the issues especially at a fresh install of the distro.
Now I have both hardware display adapters installed side by side without issues.
The only thing left to resolve is the the kernel not loading the nvidia modules.

Using mageia-prime-intstall they appear to be built, but failing at the X session 'Installing Nvidia Drivers'
It maybe they are not compressed and/or the driver name is a bit different ...

Thanks for the reply.

by **gregM** » Jan 29th, '26, 02:36

AstorBG wrote:When you have optimus laptop i.e. with hybrid graphic cards, its not good idea to install the NVidia driver during the installation but rather install the integrated GPU, in your case Intel graphic card. If you get after the installation to Plasma, then udpate the system, reboot. Then go to MCC, Hardware, setup a graphical server and chose your nvidia series and follow the instructions in the GUI to install the nvidia GPU. Your nvidia card is a bit older so you might use the legacy driver (470 or something), Check this page https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia-prime_for_Optimus if you havent done so. Bare in mind that Mageia 10 is in alpha.

Thanks for the reply,
I know a bit more now having read the Mageia-prime for Optimus help.
And yes blindly selecting Nvidia at install of Mageia10-Alpha was a big mistake.

In current setup where either Intel and Nvidia cards are available using mageia-prime, think I may have selected the Latest Legacy driver in MCC Setup Graphical Server..

Here is the results of the dmesg and lspci showing the card model. What driver from the list presented best suits it ?

Code: Select all: dmesg |grep -i nvidia [ 8.511729] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: NVIDIA GM206 (126360a1) lspci |grep -i nvidia 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM206GLM [Quadro M2200 Mobile] (rev a1)

List of Nvidia cards in MCC setup Grfx Server.

: List of cards for Grfx Server; Screenshot_20260129_111444.png (83.79 KiB) Viewed 2564 times

Once I got a grip on the methods required to use either grfx adaptors with mageia-prime the question remian what driver to select!

The current driver seems to build with mageia-prime but fails to load as per my previous message in this thread.
Either or both of these reasons are suggested by AI, driver name mismatch and/or .ko files not compressed or where kernel expects them to be.

Being unfamiliar with the Nvidia driver versions and my card model, selecting a driver from the list is a bit tricky

Any suggestion welcome.

by **AstorBG** » Jan 29th, '26, 09:13

Ok, I checked your card and its Quadro M2200 = Maxwell 2.0, so the latest driver should support it. Then try option Driver: production(alias of GeForces 745 and later). Reboot then run mageia-prime. If you still get problems, I would suggest to wait for the final release or switch to Mageia 9, unless you want to experiment with the alpha release. Theres one old page from the wiki, may help in some borked situations: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/How_to_change_a_wrong_graphic_driver

by **morgano** » Jan 29th, '26, 12:04

AstorBG wrote:When you have optimus laptop i.e. with hybrid graphic cards, its not good idea to install the NVidia driver during the installation but rather install the integrated GPU

(I see that is noted in release notes https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_10_Re ... us_laptops, good)

Theres one old page from the wiki, may help in some borked situations: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/How_to_chang ... hic_driver

You seem to know these things - You are much welcome to enchance that page if you like, and also check https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia-prime_for_Optimus :-)

by **gregM** » Jan 30th, '26, 05:51

Playing about with the Nvidia video drivers and mageia-prime.on a 'Optimus' dual video laptop.

1. Found that my Alpha10 dkms subsystem was not completing the install of modules after building them as my fresh Alpha10 did not have the xz compression package installed.
So dkms didn't, couldn't compress the built nvidia modules from the build to the install location.

Now I actually get built and installed dkms modules.

2. Needed to add bits to the linux init command in grub to get past this error that showed up in

Code: Select all: dmesg | grep -iE failed [ 1013.283288] nvidia-modeset: ERROR: GPU:0: Failed to query display engine channel state: 0x0000927c:0:0:0x00000040[ 1016.055093] nvidia-modeset: ERROR: GPU:0: Failed to query display engine channel state: 0x0000927c:0:0:0x00000040

These bits needed to be added to /etc/default/grub ibt=off nvidia-drm.modeset=1
Note the nvidia-drm.modeset=1 has a dot not underscore as was originally tried.

Code: Select all: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="splash quiet noiswmd resume=UUID=e71ebd0f-7071-4c92-a278-3a9f52b1a32f audit=0 ibt=off nvidia-drm.modeset=1" Then update-grub Also I added persistence to the driver but unsure if it was actually required. sudo nvidia-smi -pm 1

3. Different versions of the nvidia driver rpm's were used by mageia-prime, MCC Setup Graphical Server, cli drakeconf or XFDrake, MCC Add software RPM.

This was a bit offputting as magia-prime-install grabbed the newer nvidia*-580 packages, MCC Grfx Server went for nvidia-470 packages as did cli drakconf and XFdrake. Using the Add software option of MCC allows you to select the version you might like.

What this meant was if I selected the MCC Setup Graphical Server, I would get the nvidia-470 set, then if I used mageia-prime-install it would want the newer ones and would remove the 470-set and install the 580-set.

Playing about with single driver rather than the mageia-prime twin set would at times result in black screen no blinking cursor .. Swapping back to install the single intel driver from command line was required when that happened.

For a long time the lspci |grep -iE VGA would show both cards...

Code: Select all: lspci |grep -iE VGA 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Kaby Lake-H GT2 [HD Graphics 630] (rev 04) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM206GLM [Quadro M2200 Mobile] (rev a1)

But as the kernel was stumbing over the problems fixed in notes 1&2, Nvidia didnt seem to be happy and everything fell back to using the Intel device or so it seemed.

4. I was happily using the Plasma-Wayland to check on how X sessions were getting on in using the nvidia card, but it never seemed to work, glxinfo -B allways showed the intel card in use.

Then I finally got an offloaded app to find and use the nvidia drivers. This was the command that eventually had Wayland session offload to Nvidia, while glxinfo -B showed the intel card in use.
In this test case Gimp ...

Code: Select all: __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __VK_LAYER_NV_optimus=NVIDIA_only __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia GEGL_USE_OPENCL=yes gimp

This last bit of that command was required, untill then variations of the command were not a success.
GEGL_USE_OPENCL=yes

After that booted up Gimp, nvidia-smi reported GImp was using that card.

That revealed that X11 and Wayland are much different in the way they work with the choice of vga drivers.

Plasma Wayland seems to dislike session wide use of the nvidia card and is happier offloading the use of the Nvidia card to individual apps.

With both Intel and Nvidia drivers available, depending on what session type you select at logon, (you might have to scan through the TTY's to find the Window that booted up..), sometimes I found the Wayland session on tty7 or tty3 ...

It seems like with both drivers available, when you login with sddm, it will open your session somewhere in the tty's then cycle back to the sddm login on tty1 (mistake to login again without finding the session that opened on your first login!).

After a successful mageia-prime-install boot up with all dkms modules installed and working, here are the 2 different Plasma sessions showing the way they come to life with none or all processes using the Nvidia driver.

Plasma-Wayland Session

Code: Select all: nvidia-smi +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | NVIDIA-SMI 580.126.09 Driver Version: 580.126.09 CUDA Version: 13.0 | +-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+ | GPU Name Persistence-M | Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC | | Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap | Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. | | | | MIG M. | |=========================================+========================+======================| | 0 Quadro M2200 Off | 00000000:01:00.0 Off | N/A | | N/A 44C P8 N/A / 103W | 2MiB / 4096MiB | 0% Default | | | | N/A | +-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+ +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Processes: | | GPU GI CI PID Type Process name GPU Memory | | ID ID Usage | |=========================================================================================| | No running processes found | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Plasma X11 on the other hand is happy to use the Nvidia card for everything!

Plasma-X11 Session

Code: Select all: nvidia-smi +-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+ | GPU Name Persistence-M | Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC | | Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap | Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. | | | | MIG M. | |=========================================+========================+======================| | 0 Quadro M2200 Off | 00000000:01:00.0 Off | N/A | | N/A 45C P8 N/A / 103W | 302MiB / 4096MiB | 5% Default | | | | N/A | +-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+ +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Processes: | | GPU GI CI PID Type Process name GPU Memory | | ID ID Usage | |=========================================================================================| | 0 N/A N/A 2140 G /usr/bin/ksecretd 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 2143 G /usr/libexec/Xorg 101MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 2383 G /usr/bin/ksmserver 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 2385 G /usr/bin/kded6 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 2386 G /usr/bin/kwin_x11 5MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 2451 G /usr/bin/plasmashell 46MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 2501 G /usr/bin/kaccess 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 2502 G ...it-kde-authentication-agent-1 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 2505 G ...ibexec/xdg-desktop-portal-kde 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 2684 G /usr/lib64/firefox/firefox 123MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 3364 G /usr/bin/konsole 0MiB | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Note :-
Plasma Wayland needed to be forced to use nvidia drivers on an offloaded app basis.
Plasma X11 session just found and used the nvidia drivers (once the grub init fixes and missing xz pkg were in place)

For quite a while, it seems that the nvidia drivers were available, but as I was in Wayland land, they were harder to access and led me to think things were broken, when they were just differently available.

Hope this might be of some interest to 'Optimus' laptop owners..

by **AstorBG** » Jan 30th, '26, 09:43

Cool, at least you got it working in X11 session. Nvidia and Wayland are always problematic for me, so I stick to X11. If you want better Wayland experience you might switch to Gnome. As a side note (for your dkms problems) always make sure that you have the kernel-devel package installed and matches the exact version of the kernel in use. Mageia-prime works best in X11 sessions. As another side note, if you want to test some 32bit programs or games (e.g. in wine, steam) you have to install additionally the nvidia-current-lib32.

by **gregM** » Jan 30th, '26, 11:48

A new kernel just arrived, and the dkms build seems to have been successful, a reboot will tell.

However I now have a full NVIDIA session working in Wayland by adding a environment variables file in ~/.config/environment.d/10-nvidia.conf

This was hinted at by the offloading to app that used the nvidia driver and showed in the nvidia-smi process list.
Here is the contents of that file

Code: Select all: # General NVIDIA and Wayland Settings __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __VK_LAYER_NV_optimus=NVIDIA_only __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia GEGL_USE_OPENCL=yes LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=nvidia GBM_BACKEND=nvidia-drm EGL_PLATFORM=wayland NVD_BACKEND=direct __GL_GSYNC_ALLOWED=1 __GL_VR_ALLOWED=1 MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 ELECTRON_OZONE_PLATFORM_HINT=auto WLR_NO_HARDWARE_CURSORS=1

That gave this glxinfo result at my Waylanf logon

Code: Select all: glxinfo |grep -iE "OpenGL vendor" OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation

My AI assistant was urging me to add full hardware acceleration to Firefox as well, but I couldnt find the shim package nvidia-vaapi to support that step so just getting the nvidia-smi to show the full set of processes in my Wayland session was enough for now.

Code: Select all: [greg@localhost ~]$ glxinfo |grep -iE "OpenGL vendor" OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation [greg@localhost ~]$ nvidia-xmi bash: nvidia-xmi: command not found [greg@localhost ~]$ nvidia-smi Fri Jan 30 20:03:15 2026 +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | NVIDIA-SMI 580.126.09 Driver Version: 580.126.09 CUDA Version: 13.0 | +-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+ | GPU Name Persistence-M | Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC | | Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap | Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. | | | | MIG M. | |=========================================+========================+======================| | 0 Quadro M2200 Off | 00000000:01:00.0 Off | N/A | | N/A 42C P0 N/A / 103W | 290MiB / 4096MiB | 0% Default | | | | N/A | +-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+ +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Processes: | | GPU GI CI PID Type Process name GPU Memory | | ID ID Usage | |=========================================================================================| | 0 N/A N/A 11227 G /usr/bin/ksecretd 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 11383 G /usr/bin/ksmserver 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 11385 G /usr/bin/kded6 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 11456 G /usr/bin/plasmashell 79MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 11500 G /usr/bin/kaccess 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 11501 G ...it-kde-authentication-agent-1 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 11503 G ...ibexec/xdg-desktop-portal-kde 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 11675 G /usr/lib64/firefox/firefox 186MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 11795 G /usr/bin/dolphin 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 11796 G /usr/bin/konsole 0MiB | | 0 N/A N/A 11797 G /usr/bin/kwrite 0MiB | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

So for now happy to have the ability to use the nvidia session wide in Wayland.
My touchpad works in a clunky way under Plasma X11 so was keen to see if Wayland would come to the Nvidia party.
I don't really need nvidia working, but because it was theoretically available it was a new year challange to see if I could get it working..

Thanks for your interest.

removed quote. ~Germ

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