Summary On the Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 with an NVIDIA RTX A3000 (Ampere) , the default installation of the nvidia-open drivers fails to initialize the GPU. This is a recurring issue with Ampere-based workstation GPUs where the GSP-RM (GPU System Processor) handshake fails. (see also nvidia GSP Firmware ) Hardware / Environment Device: ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 GPU: NVIDIA RTX A3000 Laptop GPU Bootloader: Limine Kernel: 6.18.x-cachyos-lts / 7.x-cachyos The Symptom on a fresh installation: nvidia-smi reports: No devices were found . dmesg shows the following critical error: [drm:nv_drm_dev_load [nvidia_drm]] ERROR [nvidia-drm] [GPU ID 0x00000100] Failed to allocate NvKmsKapiDevice The open-source driver attempts to use GSP-RM, which is currently broken for this specific firmware/hardware combination (it could be a bug in the systems BIOS - I’m not sure) The Fix (Step-by-Step) To resolve this, the system must be forced onto the proprietary (closed-source) 580xx driver stack . Modprobe Configuration: Create /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf : Plaintext options nvidia NVreg_EnableGpuFirmware=0 Switch Drivers: Running the following command replaces the open-source modules with the proprietary ones: Bash sudo pacman -S nvidia (This installs nvidia-580xx-dkms and related utils while removing the open-source packages). Boot Parameters: Ensure nvidia-drm.modeset=1 is added to the kernel cmdline (in /etc/default/limine or the respective bootloader config). regenerate your initramfs images and update the Limine entries: Bash sudo limine-mkinitcpio Suggestion for CachyOS Developers The installer currently defaults to nvidia-open for Ampere cards. For workstation-class GPUs (RTX A-series), this often leads to a “broken” out-of-the-box experience. Proposal: Implement a check in the hardware detection script. If a workstation GPU (Quadro/RTX A-series) is detected, the installer should either prompt the user or default to the proprietary nvidia package to ensure a working display stack.