Debian NVIDIA Drivers Uninstall Guide
Table of Contents
5. Debian Uninstall NVIDIA drivers and Enable Nouveau⌗
I assume here that you have used this guide install part to install your NVIDIA drivers. This whole process is good to run on runlevel 3. When there is no X running. So first boot to runlevel 3 using NVIDIA Install / Update GRUB menu entry and login and normal user.
5.1 Change root user⌗
su -
## OR ##
sudo -i
5.2 Start NVIDIA Uninstall Process⌗
nvidia-installer --uninstall
5.3 Restore / Remove /etc/X11/xorg.conf⌗
You can restore xorg.conf backup or remove /etc/X11/xorg.conf if you don’t have any special configuration.
5.4 NVIDIA Uninstall Warning⌗
You might see following warning. Just select “OK”.
5.5 NVIDIA Installer Uninstalling⌗
5.6 Debian NVIDIA Uninstall Complete⌗
5.7 Remove blacklist nouveau from blacklist.conf⌗
Remove blacklist nouveau line from /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf (or remove it with this command):
sed -i '/^blacklist nouveau$/d' /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
5.8 Remove inttf NVIDIA Install / Update GRUB entry script⌗
This was added in install guide step 2.6.
rm /etc/grub.d/42_inttf_nvidia
5.8.1 Secure Boot users (optional cleanup)⌗
Uninstalling NVIDIA drivers works normally with UEFI Secure Boot enabled or disabled.
If you used the Secure Boot guide and configured DKMS module signing, you can optionally remove the DKMS signing configuration and your local signing keys.
Optional: remove DKMS signing config (only removes these two variables if present):
for f in /etc/dkms/framework.conf /etc/dkms/frameworks.conf; do
[ -f "$f" ] && sed -i '/^mok_signing_key=/d; /^mok_certificate=/d' "$f"
done
Optional: remove your local module signing keys (only if you created them for NVIDIA):
rm -rf /root/module-signing
Note: If you enrolled a MOK key for NVIDIA module signing, it’s safe to leave it enrolled. Removing enrolled keys is optional and not required for uninstall.
5.9 Remove NVIDIA conf⌗
rm /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf
5.10 Remove inttf NVIDIA Install / Update GRUB 2 custom conf⌗
5.11 Update grub2 conf⌗
update-grub2
5.12 Generate initramfs⌗
update-initramfs -c -k $(uname -r)
5.13 Remove libnvidia-egl-wayland1 package⌗
apt remove libnvidia-egl-wayland1
You can also remove another dependency packages if needed.
5.14 Reboot⌗
reboot
