I am not really in the “Expert” league, but have never had problems building NVIDIA drivers for my linux kernels … until now!
I keep getting build errors when I try to build the drivers for the 6.12 series kernels, but not for the 6.10 kernels. However, I understand that the latest kernel release, 550.135, should work, but not for me!
I have read that certain kernel options need to be set, but do not see how to do this with “make xconfig”.
The latest driver update is 565, not 550; are you sure you’re using the latest release?
(Because the kernel internals frequently get updated, NVidia often need to adjust their own driver to match — so having a newer driver version can make a big difference as to whether it’ll compile, particularly against very new kernel releases like 6.12.)
Otherwise, if you’re having trouble compiling, including specific error messages can be helpful for understanding what the failure-mode is.
Without any log output from the make process it’s really impossible for anyone to tell what the problem you ran into is.
If you write building the driver I assume you use the .run file installer?
If you do, it creates an installer log, which would contain the required information.
If you use a distro driver with dkms then the make.log file in /var/lib/dkms/nvidia/VERSION/build has the info.
I run the 550.135 driver with kernel 6.12.3 without problems.
The release notes talk about adjustments to due to kernel changes. Which are needed to adapt to this kernel.
The 565.77 driver release notes do not mention these changes, but from past experience it is likely that it’s compatible with kernel 6.12 due to the later release date.
Unfortunately the 565.77 release did not make it to this forums “Current driver releases” topic - someone forgot to update it.
And something that disturbs me for a looooong time already: Nvidia does not provide information about the maximum supported (tested) kernel version. It’s always trial and error for the users and a lot of forum posts here and elsewhere.
DOCUMENTATION FEATURE REQUEST NVIDIA! :-p
Additional runt Nvidia:
How about investing the billions made of AI/KI into hiring some more linux developers? ;-) :-O :-P
Edit #2:
Oh linux users make only 4% of all PC users? - Nah, not worth it! So let’s not put too much effort into it. Which creates a chicken & egg problem… No competition anyways as Intel does not compete in high end GPUs and AMD just dropped out of the race… Sigh I really hoped for some market pressure!
"CONFIG_DRM_TTM_HELPER needs to be (newly) enabled for 6.11.x when CONFIG_DRM_FBDEV_EMULATION is set.
Albeit you won’t be able to set that option directly due to how the kernel configs are setup and you need to enable another option that enables it, e.g. CONFIG_DRM_AMDGPU=m would enable it (even if not using amdgpu),"