How To Install nvidia-kernel-dkms on Debian 12
Introduction
In this tutorial we learn how to install nvidia-kernel-dkms on Debian 12.
What is nvidia-kernel-dkms
nvidia-kernel-dkms is:
This package builds the NVIDIA binary kernel modules needed by nvidia-driver, using DKMS. Provided that you have the kernel header packages installed, the kernel module will be built for your running kernel and automatically rebuilt for any new kernel headers that are installed.
The NVIDIA binary driver provides optimized hardware acceleration of OpenGL/GLX/EGL/GLES applications via a direct-rendering X Server for graphics cards using NVIDIA chip sets.
This version only supports GeForce, NVS, Quadro, RTX, Tesla, … GPUs based on the Maxwell, Pascal, Volta, Turing, Ampere or newer architectures. Look at the legacy driver or Tesla driver packages for older cards.
See /usr/share/doc/nvidia-kernel-dkms/README.txt.gz for a complete list of supported GPUs and PCI IDs.
Building the kernel modules has been tested up to Linux 6.2.
There are three methods to install nvidia-kernel-dkms on Debian 12. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.
Install nvidia-kernel-dkms Using apt-get
Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.
sudo apt-get update
After updating apt database, We can install nvidia-kernel-dkms using apt-get by running the following command:
sudo apt-get -y install nvidia-kernel-dkms
Install nvidia-kernel-dkms Using apt
Update apt database with apt using the following command.
sudo apt update
After updating apt database, We can install nvidia-kernel-dkms using apt by running the following command:
sudo apt -y install nvidia-kernel-dkms
Install nvidia-kernel-dkms Using aptitude
If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Debian. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.
sudo aptitude update
After updating apt database, We can install nvidia-kernel-dkms using aptitude by running the following command:
sudo aptitude -y install nvidia-kernel-dkms
How To Uninstall nvidia-kernel-dkms on Debian 12
To uninstall only the nvidia-kernel-dkms package we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get remove nvidia-kernel-dkms
Uninstall nvidia-kernel-dkms And Its Dependencies
To uninstall nvidia-kernel-dkms and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Debian 12, we can use the command below:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove nvidia-kernel-dkms
Remove nvidia-kernel-dkms Configurations and Data
To remove nvidia-kernel-dkms configuration and data from Debian 12 we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y purge nvidia-kernel-dkms
Remove nvidia-kernel-dkms configuration, data, and all of its dependencies
We can use the following command to remove nvidia-kernel-dkms configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge nvidia-kernel-dkms
Dependencies
nvidia-kernel-dkms have the following dependencies:
References
Summary
In this tutorial we learn how to install nvidia-kernel-dkms package on Debian 12 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.