Can not remove i915 driver and module Linux Mint

Question

I have faced with the next issue: I can not remove i915 driver and module.

I have installed nvidia driver for Geforce 920M card but during OS installation it was installed i915 driver as well.

How to get rid of this driver?

I was trying to follow multiple articles but they didn't help.

$ lsmod |grep nvidia
nvidia_uvm            696320  0
nvidia_modeset        745472  2
nvidia              10076160  55 nvidia_modeset,nvidia_uvm
drm                   360448  8 i915,drm_kms_helper,nvidia

$ lsmod |grep i915
i915                 1208320  3
i2c_algo_bit           16384  1 i915
drm_kms_helper        139264  1 i915
drm                   360448  8 i915,drm_kms_helper,nvidia
video                  40960  3 i915,dell_wmi,dell_laptop

$ dpkg --list *dkms
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                                                  Version                         Architecture                    Description
+++-=====================================================-===============================-===============================-===============================================================================================================
ii  bbswitch-dkms                                         0.8-3ubuntu1                    amd64                           Interface for toggling the power on NVIDIA Optimus video cards
ii  dkms                                                  2.2.0.3-2ubuntu11               all                             Dynamic Kernel Module Support Framework
ii  ndiswrapper-dkms                                      1.59-6                          all                             Source for the ndiswrapper Linux kernel module (DKMS)
un  spl-dkms                                              <none>                          <none>                          (no description available)
ii  virtualbox-guest-dkms                                 5.0.18-dfsg-2build1             all                             x86 virtualization solution - guest addition module source for dkms
un  zfs-dkms  

$ uname -r
4.4.0-21-generic

Could you please help me to remove i915 module completely with all it's dependencies correctly ?

Answer 1

Two answers:

First: which processor is your Linux running on? Maybe an Intel core i3/i5/i7? If yes, then i915 driver is at least interesting if you want to use your internal graphic card in the future (for example if your dedicated graphic card driver fails during a kernel update and you still want a pretty graphical interface).

Second: you can blacklist this driver for your system to not auto-load this driver on next boots (it will not be uninstalled but will not be loaded). The internet can help you finding the module blacklist config file and syntax.