Saturday, October 18, 2025

Nvidia new hotplug feature on Linux


 If you use nvidia driver for your GPU, you probably wonder why in some config, you can't hotplug your second monitor. You need to reboot to be able to use it. I found out recently with the help of chatgpt that I have been using old feature of nvidia driver all this time. The key settings are in /etc/environment.

 My previous settings:

  __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1
__GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia
LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=nvidia
GTK_USE_PORTAL=1

KWIN_DRM_USE_EGL_STREAMS=1

If you can see above, I am using KWIN_DRM_USE_EGL_STREAMS=1 which means KDE is using NVIDIA’s old EGLStreams backend, which is notoriously bad at detecting new monitors in Wayland sessions. I should remove it and replace it with    GBM_BACKEND=nvidia-drm which is the modern buffer management backend for NVIDIA + Wayland that supports hotplugging of monitors.

 So i replaced it with this settings:

  
__NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1
__GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia
LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=nvidia
GTK_USE_PORTAL=1  
GBM_BACKEND=nvidia-drm

 I need to reboot once and testing it by unplugging and plugging it back. It works!

 That's all there is to it. Have fun! 

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Nvidia new hotplug feature on Linux

 If you use nvidia driver for your GPU, you probably wonder why in some config, you can't hotplug your second monitor. You need to reboo...