Edit: So after an exciting evening of uninstalling drivers, rebooting, playing a round of CSGO and starting over, I can report that nothing is broken. I haven’t tried much other than a handful of games though. In the end I removed the drivers in batches, uninstalling all versions of a major version together (all 515.*, then 520.*, then 525.* etc).

Of note is that all the drivers I removed were the 32 bit versions, since the 64 bit one updated properly. This is what’s left of the drivers, I believe these are all actually needed and I’m not comfortable removing any of them (and even if they’re not needed the space savings would be minimal anyway):

Name                                 Application ID                                             Version                       Branch                  Origin                                 Installation
Mesa                                 org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.default                        23.1.1                        22.08                   flathub                                system
Mesa (Extra)                         org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.default                        23.1.1                        22.08-extra             flathub                                system
nvidia-535-54-03                     org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-535-54-03                                             1.4                     flathub                                system
Mesa                                 org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.default                      23.1.1                        22.08                   flathub                                system
Mesa (Extra)                         org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.default                      23.1.1                        22.08-extra             flathub                                system
nvidia-535-54-03                     org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.nvidia-535-54-03                                           1.4                     flathub                                system

Original post:

Hello, I was wondering if anyone knows why flatpak keeps tons of Nvidia driver versions installed. Currently on my Fedora install I have:

Name                        Application ID                                    Version              Branch        Origin                       Installation
nvidia-510-68-02            org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.nvidia-510-68-02                         1.4           flathub                      system
nvidia-515-57               org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.nvidia-515-57                            1.4           flathub                      system
nvidia-515-65-01            org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.nvidia-515-65-01                         1.4           flathub                      system
nvidia-515-76               org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.nvidia-515-76                            1.4           flathub                      system
nvidia-520-56-06            org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.nvidia-520-56-06                         1.4           flathub                      system
nvidia-525-60-11            org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.nvidia-525-60-11                         1.4           flathub                      system
nvidia-525-78-01            org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.nvidia-525-78-01                         1.4           flathub                      system
nvidia-525-85-05            org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.nvidia-525-85-05                         1.4           flathub                      system
nvidia-525-89-02            org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.nvidia-525-89-02                         1.4           flathub                      system
nvidia-530-41-03            org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.nvidia-530-41-03                         1.4           flathub                      system
nvidia-535-54-03            org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.nvidia-535-54-03                         1.4           flathub                      system

A few months ago, when a new Nvidia update came out, usually what I’d do is update then run flatpak uninstall --unused, which would get rid of the older version no problem. As you can see, around driver version 510 this stopped working. If I try to remove them manually with eg. flatpak remove org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.nvidia-510-68-02, I get this:

Info: applications using the extension org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.nvidia-510-68-02 branch 1.4:
   com.valvesoftware.Steam
Really remove? [y/n]:

My question is, is Steam actually using these drivers? Are these safe to remove? I’d like to get rid of them since they’re bloating my root partition and updating 10 driver versions takes ages.

  • @gabriele97@lemmy.g97.topEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    Good question. I have the same problem with flatpak (I have both 525 and 515 version installed at the moment) but I use the deb version of steam, not the flatpak one. I should try to remove them.

    BUT, if I recall correctly, I still have something relayed to Nvidia 515 installed via apt (for example, when the kernel updates, I see that apt compiles the modules related to 515 together with the ones for 525).

  • @SinJab0n@mujico.orgEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    I can remember flatpak apps working each one with their own libraries, meaning app1 installed nvidia-drivers-535, app2 uses nvidia-430, app3…

    U get my point, this is just a reference point tough since this comes from a vague memory about exactly this being controversial for all the redundancy it could cause.

    • @claymoreOPEnglish
      3•1 year ago

      I checked a few and all of them are bound to steam, nothing else, apart from the last one that’s also being used by Blender. At this point i think I’ll try uninstalling the oldest and check if steam still works. After that I’ll work my way forward. Thanks

        • @claymoreOPEnglish
          5•1 year ago

          Right now I’ve only removed the oldest driver, and steam opened fine. No complaints in it’s terminal output. For now I’m going to test a few games and once I remove a few more versions I’ll edit the post.