Debian Dual Monitors issue after installing Nvidia newer Driver

Question

please, help me with this problem.

I'm a newbie in the Linux world. Recently I decided to install Debian 12 Bookwarm and discovered all the challenges involving its integrations with Nnvidia drivers.

My setup consists of an RTX 3070 and an Intel Core i5 13600k. I do have two monitors a Dell 23' and a Pichau Cepheus 29'. When I first installed Debian it came with the Nouveau drivers and both my monitors were working without any problems. I then installed Nvidia proprietary drivers to extract more performance for some use cases. For the first time, I just decided to follow a guide using apt to download the drivers and all their dependencies. It worked pretty well. I was using an HDMI port on the GPU connected to my Dell 23' and the Motherboard HDMI connected to the other monitor. Using the onboarding processor graphics.

My problem started when I needed to update the graphics version once the apt version was 345 and I needed the 555 version of the Nvidia driver. I discovered I needed to use the .run installer provided by Nvidia. My process was basically: 1. Uninstall the already installed Nvidia driver. 2. blacklist the Nouveau driver on kernel instruction options. 3. reboot the system in level 2 ( terminal only ). and then 4. Install the driver using the downloaded script.

After the installation, the monitor connected to the motherboard HDMI does not work. I do need it using the processor-integrated graphics.

Curiously the second monitor is on but blank. When I hit ctrl + alt + f3 to go to the terminal outside of Gnome it shows the terminal on the other monitor.

lspci | grep VGA output:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Raptor Lake-S GT1 [UHD Graphics 770] (rev 04)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GA104 [GeForce RTX 3070 Lite Hash Rate] (rev a1) 

xrandr -q output:

Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1080 x 1920, maximum 32767 x 32767
HDMI-0 connected primary 1080x1920+0+0 left (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 509mm x 286mm
   1920x1080     60.00*+  59.94    50.00  
   1600x900      60.00  
   1280x1024     75.02    60.02  
   1280x720      60.00    59.94    50.00  
   1152x864      75.00  
   1024x768      75.03    60.00  
   800x600       75.00    60.32  
   720x576       50.00  
   720x480       59.94  
   640x480       75.00    59.94    59.93  
DP-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-3 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-4 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-5 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

I'm a newbie on Linux. If it's are any commands necessary to better understand the problem please tell me and let me add them.

Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

After some time searching for a solution, I realized some things. The reason why I was trying to install NVidia's latest driver was because I thought it would work with Gamescope. But there is an incompatibility between NVidia and gamescope at the moment and I could not solve my problem.

As very well pointed out by some friends here, the best way to use the drivers is through apt. I do recommend installing through it too.

To uninstall the NVidia driver installed by using the proprietary given script the solution is to add a --uninstall at the end, like:

nvidia-driver.sh --unninstall

Also, it is recommended to check the --help in case of doubts.'

After reinstalling the apt driver version my dual monitor setup worked fine.