Omarchy + NVIDIA on Hyprland: Drivers, Wayland & Fixes

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NVIDIA + Wayland on Hyprland is finally stable — if you set the kernel, initramfs, and Hyprland env in sync. This is the tested stack for RTX 3050–4090 on Omarchy Quattro.

Pick the right driver

GPU gen	Package	Notes
Turing/Ampere/Ada (GTX 16xx, RTX 20xx+)	`nvidia-dkms` + `nvidia-utils`	Recommended
Very new (RTX 40+)	`nvidia-open-dkms`	Open kernel module, check Arch wiki first
Pascal/Maxwell legacy	`nvidia-470xx-dkms` (AUR)	Last branch supporting them

Auto-detect:

lspci | grep -i nvidia
# Example: NVIDIA GA107 [GeForce RTX 3050]

Interactive TUI helper: omarchy-nvidia — gum based, injects all below automatically.

Manual setup (3 files)

1. Kernel cmdline — modeset + fbdev

sudo nano /etc/default/grub
# GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="... nvidia_drm.modeset=1 nvidia_drm.fbdev=1"
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

2. Early load — mkinitcpio

sudo nano /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
# MODULES=(nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm)
sudo mkinitcpio -P

3. Hyprland env vars

# ~/.config/hypr/envs.conf or hypr/nvidia.conf
env = LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME,nvidia
env = __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME,nvidia
env = NVD_BACKEND,direct
env = WLR_NO_HARDWARE_CURSORS,1
# Don't force SDL_VIDEODRIVER=vulkan alone; leave unset for games

Reload: hyprctl reload.

Hybrid laptops (ASUS TUF, etc.)

sudo pacman -S asusctl supergfxctl
sudo systemctl enable --now asusd supergfxd power-profiles-daemon
supergfxctl -g          # expect Hybrid
supergfxctl -m Hybrid && sudo reboot  # if Integrated
prime-run firefox       # run app on dGPU
prime-run python train.py

Suspend/black screen fix:

sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf <<'EOF'
options nvidia NVreg_PreserveVideoMemoryAllocations=1
options nvidia NVreg_TemporaryFilePath=/var/tmp
EOF
sudo systemctl enable nvidia-suspend.service nvidia-hibernate.service nvidia-resume.service

Verify

nvidia-smi
glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer"  # should show NVIDIA, not llvmpipe
vulkaninfo | grep driverName
hyprctl systeminfo | grep -i nvidia

If llvmpipe shows, you missed early load or modeset.

Common failures

Black screen on boot → You forgot fbdev=1 or Secure Boot is still on. Disable Secure Boot in BIOS.

Fans at max / no control → Install asusctl + supergfxd, check supergfxctl -g.

Steam games still crash → See Gaming guide for SDL_VIDEODRIVER + gamescope combo. NVIDIA needs lib32-nvidia-utils for Proton.

CachyOS overlay conflict → If you installed Omarchy on CachyOS, run the CachyOS fix guide — DKMS vs built-in kernel mismatch.

Logs: cat /tmp/omarchy-nvidia.log, journalctl -b -p err, dmesg | grep -i nvidia.