Kernel Modules#

The NVIDIA Linux GPU Driver contains several kernel modules:

nvidia.ko
nvidia-modeset.ko
nvidia-uvm.ko
nvidia-drm.ko
nvidia-peermem.ko

The kernel modules are open source and dual licensed MIT/GPLv2. With every driver release, the source code is published at NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules and a tarball is provided at https://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/NVIDIA-kernel-module-source/.

Open GPU Kernel Modules Installation#

For simplification, we’ve condensed the package manager recommendations in table format. All releases beyond driver version 570 will use these packaging conventions.

The following commands will install a full driver, which will include all desktop components as well as CUDA libraries and tools for computational workloads.

Table 5 Open GPU kernel module installation#
Distribution	Install the latest	Install a specific branch
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8/9 AlmaLinux 8/9 Oracle Linux 8/9 Amazon Linux 2023 Rocky Linux 8/9	`# dnf module enable nvidia-driver:open-dkms` `# dnf install nvidia-open`	`# dnf module enable nvidia-driver:580-open` `# dnf install nvidia-open`
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 AlmaLinux 10 Rocky Linux 10 Oracle Linux 10	`# dnf install nvidia-open`	`# dnf versionlock \nvidia\580\*` `# dnf install nvidia-open`
Fedora 44	`# dnf install nvidia-open`	`# dnf versionlock add \nvidia\580\*` `# dnf install nvidia-open`
KylinOS 11	`# dnf install nvidia-open`	KylinOS 11 carries no DNF module metadata. It has no module streams, thus you cannot select a branch with one.
Azure Linux 3	`# tdnf install nvidia-open`	`tdnf` does not support any sort of locking.
openSUSE Leap 15/16 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15/16	`# zypper install nvidia-open`	`# zypper addlock "nvidia >= 590"` `# zypper install nvidia-open`
Debian 12/13	`# apt install nvidia-open`	`# apt install nvidia-driver-pinning-580` `# apt install nvidia-open`
Ubuntu 22.04/24.04/26.04	`# apt install nvidia-open`	`# apt install nvidia-driver-pinning-580` `# apt install nvidia-open`