[PLUG] trying to simplify my Linux operating system graphics components

[American Citizen]

Hi all:

Yesterday, I was in a key Zoom meeting with a person, talking for about 
10 mins, setting up the interview, when BOOM!, the openSuse linx Leap 
15.4 system suddenly dropped down to initlevel 3 and all the graphics 
screens were erased. (later investigations showed the xserver software 
was actually scrubbed from my active OS and I had to do a reinstall of 
the xserver software)

My system is 64 bit, Linux localhost 5.14.21-150400.24.18-default #1 SMP 
PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu Aug 4 14:17:48 UTC 2022 (e9f7bfc) x86_64 x86_64 
x86_64 GNU/Linux openSuse system, at current levels.

After this mysterious crash, I decided to look at the state of graphics 
drivers for my Nvidia GEForce series 710 graphics card which is the only 
graphics card I have.

Unfortunately lsmod shows that nouveau graphics driver is active, and 
even though I enabled the Nvidia G06 drivers

lsmod shows: Reading installed packages...

S  | Name                        | Summary | Type
---+-----------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+--------
i+ | nvidia-computeG06           | NVIDIA driver for computing with 
GPGPU                                | package
i  | nvidia-computeG06-32bit     | 32bit NVIDIA driver for computing 
with GPGPU                          | package
i  | nvidia-gfxG06-kmp-default   | NVIDIA graphics driver kernel module 
for GeForce 700 series and newer | package
i+ | nvidia-glG06                | NVIDIA OpenGL libraries for OpenGL 
acceleration                       | package
i  | nvidia-glG06-32bit          | 32bit NVIDIA OpenGL libraries for 
OpenGL acceleration                 | package
i+ | x11-video-nvidiaG06         | NVIDIA graphics driver for GeForce 
700 series and newer               | package
i  | x11-video-nvidiaG06-32bit   | 32bit NVIDIA graphics driver for 
GeForce 700 series and newer         | package

Unfortunately, and to me, disconcerting, lsmod does NOT show a single 
nvidia mod installed, but rather the nouveau drivers or kernal modules 
instead.

localhost:/home/owner # lsmod | grep nou
nouveau              2351104  4
video                  57344  1 nouveau
drm_ttm_helper         16384  1 nouveau
ttm                    81920  2 drm_ttm_helper,nouveau
i2c_algo_bit           16384  1 nouveau
mxm_wmi                16384  1 nouveau
drm_kms_helper        303104  1 nouveau
drm                   630784  8 drm_kms_helper,drm_ttm_helper,ttm,nouveau
wmi                    36864  4 hp_wmi,wmi_bmof,mxm_wmi,nouveau
button                 24576  1 nouveau
--------------------

If I attempt to remove the nouveau kernal modules, the x-server 
complains, and expects nouveau to be installed as the PRIMARY video 
driver, in fact it demands it!!

But I only have a lowly GE Force 710 card. (and yes, I installed the 
Nvidia software repository so I could install the Nvidia native drivers 
for this card and I did install the appropriate G06 drivers according to 
Yast2.

But, and this is really confusing, the KDE desktop alludes to 4 graphics 
systems installed:

         egl
         glx
         vulkan
         x-server

I know that Mesa has some video drivers installed on my system.

But my question is this,

How do I get everything down to a simple Nvidia Ge Force 710 graphics 
card? (and run the KDE desktop?)

- Randall