Hardware drivers
Driver handling differs by installation mode.
Offline installation
Offline installation keeps drivers from the selected image and removes components that are not appropriate for the target:
- the standard image does not include the modern NVIDIA stack;
- the NVIDIA image removes NVIDIA-only packages when no NVIDIA GPU is detected;
- physical installations remove live VirtualBox, VMware and QEMU guest tools.
It does not run the complete chwd --autoconfigure process, so selecting the correct image is important.
Online installation
Calamares runs the following command inside the installed target system:
chwd --autoconfigure
The process scans PCI and USB devices, matches hardware IDs against profiles, installs driver packages and writes module, initramfs and device-specific configuration.
Profiles cover major Intel, AMD and NVIDIA graphics configurations, hybrid NVIDIA laptops, some legacy NVIDIA branches, selected network devices, virtual-machine guests, handheld devices, T2 Macs and some fingerprint devices.
Projects and documentation
CatOS uses its fork so hardware profiles can match CatOS repositories, kernels, images and installer behavior while continuing to inherit upstream design and hardware data.
NVIDIA
- GTX 10 Series or older: standard image.
- GTX 16 and RTX 20 through RTX 40: NVIDIA image recommended.
- RTX 50 or newer: NVIDIA image required.
See the CatOS image guide and ArchWiki NVIDIA page.
Limits of automatic configuration
New device IDs, vendor-specific hybrid graphics, external GPUs, third-party DKMS modules and firmware defects may still require manual work. Test display outputs, suspend, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, sound and input devices after installation.
Useful checks:
lspci -k -d ::03xx
lspci -nnk
nvidia-smi
chwd --help