NVIDIA Drivers on Garuda Sway

The Sway project does not support the proprietary NVIDIA driver. Sway refuses to start with it unless it is launched with the --unsupported-gpu flag. Garuda Sway handles this for you, so the proprietary driver works without manual configuration.

What Garuda Sway does for you

Part	What it does
Live ISO	Sway ISOs from `260705` onward support the proprietary driver in the live session, with the boot option “Boot allowing proprietary drivers”.
Hardware profile	The NVIDIA hardware profile installs the driver, enables `nvidia-drm` modesetting and fbdev, and loads `nvidia-drm` at boot.
Greeter	The login screen is nwg-hello on greetd. greetd starts the greeter’s Sway with `--unsupported-gpu`.
Session	nwg-hello sets `SWAY_UNSUPPORTED_GPU=1` for the sessions it starts. The regular Sway session works with NVIDIA, so no extra session is needed.

You do not need to add nvidia_drm.modeset=1 or nvidia_drm.fbdev=1 as kernel parameters. You also do not need a force_drivers line in a dracut config.

Install with the proprietary driver

Download a Garuda Sway ISO from 260705 or newer.
Boot it and pick “Boot allowing proprietary drivers”. The live session installs the driver while it boots, so reaching the desktop can take a few minutes.
Install Garuda as usual and reboot.
Log in with the regular Sway session.

Install the driver on an installed system

The driver comes from the Garuda hardware profile. The Garuda Hardware Tool picks the right profile for your card. The Setup Assistant offers the same step.

Update the system and reboot.
Terminal window
```
garuda-update
```
Install the NVIDIA profile.
Terminal window
```
sudo garuda-hardware-tool --nonfree
```
Reboot and log in with the regular Sway session.

The tool chooses one of two profiles:

Profile	Driver	Cards
`garuda-hardware-profile-nvidia`	`nvidia-open-dkms` 590 or newer	Turing and newer
`garuda-hardware-profile-nvidia-580xx`	`nvidia-580xx-dkms`	Maxwell, Pascal and Volta

Cards older than Maxwell get no NVIDIA profile. They keep the open source Nouveau driver. See the Arch Wiki NVIDIA page for the details of each driver branch.

Check that it works

nvidia-smi

The output lists your card and the driver version. garuda-health also reports when the NVIDIA driver is installed but the wrong hardware profile is active.

Glxgears and nvidia-smi running on Sway

Manual setup for custom sessions

This section is only for sessions that do not start through Garuda’s greeter, for example your own greetd command or a launch from a TTY. The hardware profile still sets up the driver. Only the Sway launch needs the flag.

Start Sway with the flag:

sway --unsupported-gpu

For a custom desktop file, put the flag in the Exec line. Create a new file instead of editing /usr/share/wayland-sessions/sway.desktop, which package updates overwrite.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Sway (custom)
Exec=sway --unsupported-gpu
Type=Application

Optional environment variables

The default setup needs none of these. Add them one at a time, and only for a problem they address. Set them in a wrapper script that launches Sway, as shown in the greetd wiki.

Variable	Use it when
`WLR_NO_HARDWARE_CURSORS=1`	The cursor is invisible or glitches. This switches wlroots to software cursors.
`GBM_BACKEND=nvidia-drm`	Apps fail to pick the NVIDIA GBM backend.
`__GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia`	Several OpenGL implementations are installed and you want the NVIDIA one.
`LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=nvidia`	Hardware video decoding through VA-API should use the NVIDIA driver.
`WLR_RENDERER=vulkan`	You want the Vulkan renderer. It can stop Sway from starting, so test it from a TTY first.

See the Arch Wiki pages on Wayland and Xwayland for more NVIDIA notes.