Since Nitrux 5.0.0, as explained below, the distribution includes the NVIDIA Open Kernel Module. Nitrux does not use the Nouveau MESA driver.
As of 18 July 2024, NVIDIA officially announced a transition to an open-source driver. However, it doesn’t support the same GPU architectures as the Nouveau MESA driver or NVIDIA’s Legacy/Current Proprietary driver, and it isn’t entirely “open.”
NVIDIA states: “For newer GPUs from the Turing, Ampere, Ada Lovelace, or Hopper architectures, we recommend switching to the open-source GPU kernel modules. For older GPUs from the Maxwell, Pascal, or Volta architectures, the open-source GPU kernel modules are not compatible with your platform. Continue to use the NVIDIA proprietary driver. For mixed deployments with older and newer GPUs in the same system, continue to use the proprietary driver.”
Following NVIDIA’s deprecation of the Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta architectures in October 2025 (announced in July 2025 for Windows and eventually affecting Linux; according to this NVIDIA schedule, the 580 driver series will be the last to support those architectures), starting with Nitrux 5.0.0, the distribution will no longer use the NVIDIA Proprietary driver; instead, it will use the NVIDIA Open Kernel Module.
Important Notes
We cannot include any NVIDIA Legacy drivers (e.g., 470, 390) alongside the current version, as NVIDIA does not support installing two drivers simultaneously (see links 1 and 2). Additionally, NVIDIA drivers before version 470 (e.g., nvidia-390) do not support hardware-accelerated XWayland, causing non-Wayland-native applications to perform poorly in Wayland sessions.
Nitrux includes integration for EnvyControl, a CLI tool that makes it easy to switch between GPU modes on NVIDIA Optimus systems (i.e., laptops with hybrid Intel + NVIDIA or AMD + NVIDIA graphics configurations) under Linux, in Workspace Settings.