# Possible to have nvidia & nouveau installed and switch?

## adversity

I was curious if you can have both the nvidia as well as the nouveau driver installed, and switch between them? I assume all you have to do is setup some scripts to blacklist one or the other? Is there a better way to do it, or is it simply not possible?

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## chithanh

It depends on what you want exactly.

It is possible to switch between nouveau and nvidia drivers. Three steps are necessary:

Unload the old kernel module and load the new one (nouveau wiki tells you how to unload nouveau.ko)

Switch the OpenGL driver with eselect opengl

Modify the Device section in xorg.conf or xorg.conf.d/ for the new driverIf you just want nouveau KMS for high resolution framebuffer console before X starts with nvidia, then you don't need the second and third step. Make sure very carefully that nouveau.ko and nvidia.ko not loaded simultaneously at any time.

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## adversity

That's actually what I was looking to do. For whatever reason I can't get the nvidia drivers to change resolution when booting (I've tried it with VESA, UVESA frame-buffer support and the right parameters in grub). I assume KMS would stop working though once X starts and the nvidia drivers take over? Like switching between X and a console is instantaneous with KMS, where there is a delay with the nvidia drivers.

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## chithanh

Indeed, KMS will stop working when you unload the nouveau driver. So no flicker-free vtswitch.

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