Big Driver Manager

Drivers, kernels and Mesa for BigLinux and BigCommunity — from a GTK 4 interface or from the terminal.

Features · Command line · Safe Mesa switching · Architecture · Installation · Development

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Overview

Big Driver Manager finds out what hardware a machine has and installs what it needs: graphics drivers (NVIDIA, Mesa variants, virtual machine tools), kernels together with their modules, firmware, and drivers for Wi-Fi, printers, scanners and other devices.

It ships as two packages built from this repository:

Package	What it is
biglinux-driver-manager	The GTK 4 / libadwaita interface. It only draws: everything that changes the system is delegated to the command line.
big-driver-manager-cli	The core and the command line, big-drivers: hardware detection, the driver database and every privileged operation. No graphical dependencies — it runs in the live session, in the installer and at boot.

One PKGBUILD builds both, so the interface and the core it imports always ship the same version.

Screenshots

Kernels	Installed drivers
Mesa variants	Switching Mesa: the plan, before anything runs

Features

Graphics

• Automatic driver selection — detects every display controller and picks the right driver: the NVIDIA branch from NVIDIA's own support list (current, 580xx, 470xx, or nouveau), the matching module package for every installed kernel, and guest tools on VirtualBox, VMware and QEMU/KVM.
• Hybrid laptops — hybrid, nvidia or integrated GPU modes, with PRIME, RTD3 power management and display-manager integration.
• Black-screen protection — if the proprietary driver does not bring up a login screen, the card falls back to nouveau before the user is left without a display.
• Mesa variants — switch between Stable, Tkg-Stable, Tkg-git and Amber without removing anything that depends on Mesa (see Safe Mesa switching).

Variant	Package	For
Stable (recommended)	mesa	Everyday use, gaming and video playback
Performance	mesa-tkg-stable	Gaming optimizations on top of the stable release
Development	mesa-tkg-git	The latest Mesa source — advanced users only
Legacy	mesa-amber	Very old GPUs limited to OpenGL 2.1

Kernels

• Lists the kernels in the repositories — LTS, standard, real-time, XanMod, CachyOS — with the running and installed ones marked.
• Installs a kernel together with its headers and every module the running kernel uses (NVIDIA, Broadcom Wi-Fi, VirtualBox…), so a new kernel never boots without its drivers.
• Never removes the running kernel; reports installed kernels that left the repositories.

Devices

• Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Bluetooth, DVB/TV, audio, webcams, touchscreens, printers, 3D printers and scanners, matched by PCI/USB/SDIO device IDs.
• Firmware packages and an Installed view grouped by category.

Everywhere

• One password prompt per operation, through polkit.
• Translated into 32 locales: the interface, the command line and the polkit prompts.
• Accessible output: colors only on a terminal; plain English for logs, pipes and the interface.

Command line: big-drivers

big-drivers (also installed as big-driver-manager-cli) does from the terminal what the interface does — and is what the interface itself runs, as root, for every change. Run as a normal user, it shows what it will do, asks for confirmation and requests the password through polkit.

$ big-drivers --help
usage: big-drivers [-h] [--version] [--color {auto,always,never}] COMMAND ...

positional arguments:
  COMMAND
    kernel              list, install and remove kernels with their modules
    gpu                 graphics drivers (replaces mhwd)
    mesa                switch between the Mesa variants (stable, tkg, amber)
    install             install packages from the repositories
    remove              remove packages
    mhwd                install or remove an mhwd configuration

Quick reference

Task	Command
Kernels in the repositories	big-drivers kernel list
Installed kernels (JSON for scripts)	big-drivers kernel list --installed --json
Install a kernel with its headers and modules	big-drivers kernel install linux-big
Remove a kernel and its modules	big-drivers kernel remove linux612
Graphics cards and their drivers	big-drivers gpu
Install the drivers this machine needs	big-drivers gpu install
Choose the GPU on a hybrid laptop	big-drivers gpu mode hybrid|nvidia|integrated
Mesa variants, the one in use marked	big-drivers mesa list
What a Mesa switch would do (no root)	big-drivers mesa plan tkg-stable
Switch the Mesa variant	big-drivers mesa apply tkg-stable

Add -y/--yes to skip the confirmation in scripts. mhwd-kernel's options (-l, -li, -i NAME, -r NAME) keep working.

Examples

$ big-drivers kernel list --installed
Installed kernels
─────────────────
     Kernel    Version    Repository
  ●  linux618  6.18.49-1  core        running · LTS

$ big-drivers mesa list
     Variant     Package
  ○  amber       mesa-amber
  ●  stable      mesa             in use
  ○  tkg-stable  mesa-tkg-stable
  ○  tkg-git     mesa-tkg-git

$ big-drivers mesa plan tkg-stable
Switch Mesa to Tkg-Stable
─────────────────────────
  Install:
    mesa-tkg-stable lib32-mesa-tkg-stable
  Replaced:
    mesa lib32-mesa vulkan-intel lib32-vulkan-intel vulkan-radeon lib32-vulkan-radeon …

The full reference — GPU decisions, hybrid modes, services, the installer options (--root, --pmconfig) and exit codes — is in big-driver-manager-cli/README.md.

Safe Mesa switching

Every package on a desktop depends on Mesa, directly or not. A switch therefore replaces the old variant; it never removes it on its own first.

1. Plan — before anything runs, pacman's metadata decides what the new variant replaces. The switch is refused, with the reason, when a package that stays installed would lose a dependency (for example, mesa-amber does not provide libva-mesa-driver, which biglinux-vaapi needs) or when the 32-bit twin of the variant is missing.
2. Download — the new packages are downloaded first (pacman -Sw), so a network failure cannot happen half-way.
3. Replace — one transaction (pacman -S --needed --ask 4) installs the new variant and removes what it conflicts with. Its provides (mesa, vulkan-intel, …) keep every dependent satisfied, and pacman refuses the whole transaction — changing nothing — if a dependency would break.
4. Roll back — the few old packages the new variant does not declare a conflict with are removed just before step 3 and put back, with their install reason, if it fails.

Removing in cascade (pacman -Rc) is not possible through the privileged interface at all.

Architecture

┌──────────────────────────────┐
│  biglinux-driver-manager     │  GTK 4 / libadwaita interface
│  (ui/, utils/, icons)        │  imports core/ read-only
└──────────────┬───────────────┘
               │  pkexec big-driver-manager-cli <verb>
               │  polkit action: br.com.biglinux.drivermanager.cli
               ▼
┌──────────────────────────────┐
│  big-driver-manager-cli      │  validates every request, then runs
│  core/  assets/  big-drivers │  pacman or mhwd — nothing else
└──────────────────────────────┘

• The interface never asks polkit for pacman itself. It asks for one of a few verbs, and the command line refuses anything outside that list before pacman or mhwd runs. Package names are validated so they can never become options.
• The live session and the installer, already root, use the same command.
• systemd services run gpu boot before the display manager, install drivers on live media and guard against a display manager that never comes up.

Installation

On BigLinux, install the interface from the repositories; it depends on the command line, which pacman installs with it:

sudo pacman -S biglinux-driver-manager    # interface + command line

big-driver-manager-cli can also be installed on its own where there is no desktop (servers, scripts, the installer).

Open Big Driver Manager from the application menu, or run big-driver-manager.

Building from source

git clone https://github.com/biglinux/biglinux-driver-manager.git
cd biglinux-driver-manager/pkgbuild
makepkg -si          # builds and installs both packages

The PKGBUILD builds the branch in BIGLINUX_GIT_BRANCH (default main). Releases are built by the build-package workflow and published with gitrepo.

Development

Requirements

Python 3.10+, PyGObject, GTK 4, libadwaita, pytest and ruff.

Tests and lint

(cd big-driver-manager-cli && python -m pytest)
(cd biglinux-driver-manager && \
    BDM_CLI_DIR="$PWD/../big-driver-manager-cli/usr/share/big-driver-manager-cli" \
    python -m pytest)
ruff check . && ruff format --check .

BDM_CLI_DIR makes the interface's tests import the core from this checkout; without it, a core installed in /usr/share/big-driver-manager-cli takes precedence. A safety net in the test suites refuses to run pacman, pkexec or any other command that changes the system.

End-to-end tests of the GPU flow run against the real pacman in a throwaway container — never on a real system; see big-driver-manager-cli/README.md.

Translations

Messages use GNU gettext. The command line has its own domain (big-driver-manager-cli); after changing a message, run:

big-driver-manager-cli/scripts/update-translations.sh

It refreshes the template, merges every catalog, compiles the .mo files and updates the polkit policy's translations. The tests require every catalog to be complete and to keep each message's placeholders.

Repository layout

.
├── big-driver-manager-cli/      core, command line, assets, services, polkit policy
├── biglinux-driver-manager/     GTK interface, icons, desktop entry
├── pkgbuild/                    PKGBUILD for both packages
├── docs/screenshots/            images used in this README
└── .github/workflows/           package build

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome at github.com/biglinux/biglinux-driver-manager. Please run the tests and ruff before opening a pull request, and keep the translations complete when changing messages.

License

• Interface (biglinux-driver-manager): MIT
• Core and command line (big-driver-manager-cli): GPL-3.0-or-later