Is there a recommended way to configure Omarchy for portable use across Intel and NVIDIA hardware?

[harisonw]

I've installed Omarchy onto an external USB SSD so I can boot the same installation on both my Intel Windows laptop and my AMD Ryzen 9600X + NVIDIA RTX 5070 PC.

It works perfectly on my Intel laptop, but on my gaming PC the display becomes severely corrupted when Omarchy loads.

BIOS and boot menu display normally.
Corruption starts when Omarchy loads.
The gaming PC has an RTX 5070.
The same portable installation works correctly on the Intel laptop.

Is there a recommended way to configure Omarchy for portable use across Intel and NVIDIA hardware?

Should I have installed it on the laptop or pc first?

[XNinety9]

Installing on the laptop first is the cause, but it's fixable without reinstalling. Omarchy only installs the NVIDIA driver if it sees an NVIDIA GPU at install time (install/hardware/nvidia.sh checks lspci). Installed on the Intel laptop, the drive has no NVIDIA driver, so on the PC the RTX 5070 falls back to nouveau, which gives that corruption.

From the Intel laptop (where it works), add what the installer would have added for a GSP card like the 5070:

sudo pacman -S nvidia-open-dkms nvidia-utils lib32-nvidia-utils libva-nvidia-driver
echo 'options nvidia_drm modeset=1' | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf
echo 'MODULES+=(nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm)' | sudo tee /etc/mkinitcpio.conf.d/nvidia.conf
sudo limine-update   # rebuild the initramfs with the modules

The rest is already portable: Omarchy's Hyprland NVIDIA settings (default/hypr/nvidia.lua) check for an NVIDIA GPU at each start, so they only apply on the PC, and the Intel laptop keeps using its own driver. The nvidia modules just won't find a card there.

(If you can get a usable console on the PC instead, sudo omarchy apply hardware --install-user $USER reruns the same hardware detection there.)

[harisonw]

Perfect thank you! I suppose for people reading this in the future - if they installed on the Nvidia pc first, would it have just worked or is there some extra steps that are still required?

[XNinety9]

Mostly yes. Installed on the NVIDIA PC first, the laptop would boot fine: the NVIDIA modules in the initramfs just don't find a card there, and the Hyprland NVIDIA env vars (default/hypr/nvidia.lua) are only set when an NVIDIA GPU is present at session start.

What it would miss is the Intel-specific setup, because those install steps also detect the hardware at install time (install/hardware/intel/):

• intel-media-driver / VPL for hardware video decoding (otherwise video falls back to the CPU),
• thermald and intel-lpmd on Intel laptops (thermals and battery life),
• sof-firmware on laptops that need it for the internal speakers and mic.

So whichever machine you install on first, boot the other one once and run:

sudo omarchy apply hardware --install-user $USER

It reruns the same detection there and adds what's missing, without removing anything the first machine needs.