Ebon, I have used GTX 970 and GTX 960 video cards for several years. I have used them with Bookworm since Bookworm was released, using the Bookworm packaged Nvidia proprietary drivers.
As long as the GTX 970 is not faulty, you should have an excellent experience with the GTX 970, ... unless you want to use KDE, or want to use Wayland, or want to run games via Steam, or run virtio video drivers with 3D support for virtual machines, etc. Well at least YouTube video works great ! My experience of the Bookworm packaged Nvidia proprietary drivers installation has been 'simple, stable, and excellent'. The only issue I have had is that some software that I use (KDE, Steam games, Virt-Manager, Genshin Impact) work best with Radeon video cards like the Radeon RX 6600 or RX 7700 as an example. If you can, I would recommend replacing your GTX 970 with a Radeon RX 6600 or better Radeon video card. I have had a more enjoyable experience since I did. Warning: I found the AMD drivers in Bookworm did not support the RX 7000 series (or did not when I attempted the installation), requiring me to install AMD's proprietary drivers for Ubuntu. As a test, I found that Arch Linux (KDE) identified and worked well with my RX 7700 card. Getting back to the GTX 970 video card with Bookworm packaged Nvidia proprietary drivers. I believe this installation should be easy to do. I do not know your computer set up, but assuming a standard Desktop PC with a large (and quite long), GTX 970 video card installed. I prefer a Power Supply of 650W or more, preferably 750W or more, though the below article suggests "Minimum 500 W or greater system power supply with two 6-pin PCI Express supplementary power connectors". https://www.nvidia.com/content/geforce-gtx/gtx_970_user_guide.pdf I do not do anything fancy in my Debian PCs, for example, I don't run more that one GPU for example, and I stick with installing Debian packages from Debian repositories. Doing so gives me a very stable and enjoyable experience. I really like apt and synaptic, excellent for installing programs. Note: I could not get KDE to work with Nvidia GPUs, I do not use Gnome, so I cannot comment on Gnome. Cinnamon, Mate, XFCE all have worked well for me. Here is what has always worked for me. 1) First of all my Bookworm build includes both non-free and non-free-firmware, so in /etc/apt/sources.list, I have "bookworm main non-free non-free-firmware contrib" Then I install the following packages to ensure I have the packages for my hardware and any drivers that need building: # apt install firmware-linux firmware-linux-free firmware-linux-nonfree firmware-misc-nonfree linux-headers-amd64 build-essential 2) If this is not a clean new build, I go back to using Nouveau drivers, cleaning out any previous Nvidia drivers. # apt purge nvidia* 3) Using information from: https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers I check that the Nvidia GTX 970 is found. $ lspci -nn | egrep -i "3d|display|vga" 07:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GM206 [GeForce GTX 960] [10de:1401] (rev a1) Then I use nvidia-check to see what drivers I should install: # apt install nvidia-detect # nvidia-detect Detected NVIDIA GPUs: 07:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GM206 [GeForce GTX 960] [10de:1401] (rev a1) Checking card: NVIDIA Corporation GM206 [GeForce GTX 960] (rev a1) Your card is supported by all driver versions. Your card is also supported by the Tesla 440 drivers series. Your card is also supported by the Tesla 418 drivers series. It is recommended to install the nvidia-driver package. 4) Depending on what is recommended, for example 'nvidia-driver' I would then install the driver package. # apt install nvidia-driver After the drivers are installed, I would reboot to allow the drivers to be used by Debian. # systemctl reboot (After the reboot I have not had any problems with Nouveau drivers still trying to run) 5) If you are not using Gnome or KDE (e.g. Wayland), you should be able to log in and at this point the Bookworm packaged Nvidia proprietary drivers should be working well. Please let me know what GUI you are using and if you get the Bookworm packaged Nvidia proprietary drivers working for you. If they are not working what happens (black screen, etc). If you hope to use GTX 970 for gaming, please let me know if you succeed and how, in the end, I gave up and purchased a Radeon RX 6600, something I should have done a long time ago. Why I did not change earlier was because one of my monitors uses VGA port so now with my Radeon RX 6600 GPU I use a Display Port to VGA adaptor. I had purchased the GTX 970's because they still had a DVI-A port. If you still have issues, and want me to test, I can put one of my Nvidia GPUs back in one of my test PC and try it. George On Thursday, 15-08-2024 at 08:42 Eben King wrote: > Short version: > Please help me install the Nvidia drivers for a GTX 970 on a Bookworm > system. Is there a Q&D guide that doesn't assume I'm an idiot, or is it > easy enough to explain? > > Long version: > Yes, I'm the same guy who was considering the Nouveau driver a while back. > I decided to try the stock driver because there was so much trouble > installing Nouveau, plus I got the idea that it'd be significantly less > performant than the proprietary one. > > Well, the Nvidia driver's not being cooperative either. Or maybe it's just > me. X won't run with the card but no driver so it boils down to > > * shut down > * get out of the chair > * unplug a monitor from the motherboard > * plug in the GTX > * connect the monitor to the GTX > * boot > * get back in chair > * do some stuff until it doesn't cooperate > * shut down > * get out of chair > * unplug, remove, connect, boot > * get back in the chair > > Then (maybe) find out what I did wrong. > > I can only do this procedure a few times a day until I'm worn out, so > needless to say progress is very slow. > > So, here's what I've installed: > nvidia-alternative (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > nvidia-driver (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > nvidia-driver-bin (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > nvidia-driver-libs (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > nvidia-egl-common (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > nvidia-egl-icd (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > nvidia-installer-cleanup (20220217+3~deb12u1) > nvidia-kernel-common (20220217+3~deb12u1) > nvidia-kernel-dkms (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > nvidia-kernel-support (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > nvidia-legacy-check (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > nvidia-modprobe (535.161.07-1~deb12u1) > nvidia-persistenced (535.171.04-1~deb12u1) > nvidia-settings (535.171.04-1~deb12u1) > nvidia-smi (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > nvidia-support (20220217+3~deb12u1) > nvidia-suspend-common (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > nvidia-vdpau-driver (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > nvidia-vulkan-common (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > nvidia-vulkan-icd (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > > libnvidia-allocator1 (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > libnvidia-cfg1 (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > libnvidia-egl-gbm1 (1.1.0-2) > libnvidia-egl-wayland1 (1:1.1.10-1) > libnvidia-eglcore (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > libnvidia-encode1 (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > libnvidia-glcore (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > libnvidia-glvkspirv (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > libnvidia-ml1 (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > libnvidia-pkcs11-openssl3 (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > libnvidia-ptxjitcompiler1 (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > libnvidia-rtcore (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > > linux-compiler-gcc-12-x86 (6.1.99-1) > linux-headers-6.1.0-23-amd64 (6.1.99-1) > linux-headers-6.1.0-23-common (6.1.99-1) > linux-headers-amd64 (6.1.99-1) > linux-kbuild-6.1 (6.1.99-1) > > glx-alternative-mesa (1.2.2) > glx-alternative-nvidia (1.2.2) > glx-diversions (1.2.2) > > dkms (3.0.10-8+deb12u1) > firmware-nvidia-gsp (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > xserver-xorg-video-nvidia (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > libcuda1 (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > libegl-nvidia0 (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > libgl1-nvidia-glvnd-glx (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > libgles-nvidia1 (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > libgles-nvidia2 (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > libgles1 (1.6.0-1) > libglx-nvidia0 (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > libnvcuvid1 (535.183.01-1~deb12u1) > > Early in the boot, if the GLX is out, there's a message "No Nvidia card > detected.". Not sure what's making it or what that line says if the GLX is > in. By "early" I mean "within a few lines after the fsck". (Maybe > nvidia-persistenced.service?) > > When the computer goes to boot into X, the backlight flashes 10ish times, > maybe once per second, and then I can ctrl-alt-F1 and log in. > > The card is one of these: > 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GM204 [GeForce > GTX 970] [10de:13c2] (rev a1) > > Please let me know what further info would be helpful. > > -- > An ASCII character walks into a bar and orders a double. "Having a bad > day?" asks the barman. "Yeah, I have a parity error," replies the ASCII > chrcter. The barman says, "Yeah, I thought you looked a bit off." - Skud > >
