Thanks for the explain; so if I want to stay with nouveau then I shouldn't install it. Right now nouveau is driving my temporary nvidia card, I presume that when I change the AMD card nouveau will simply use its non-proprietary AMD driver?

You are thinking in Windows terms.

No, a parallel installation of the amd graphics firmware will not kill you nouveau stuff or interfere in any way. They are no "drivers" in Windows terms. They are just firmware that is required for a reasonable display.

And they are not used at all if the kernel does not detect an AMD graphics during boot.

What you could refer to as driver for the AMD card is already contained in the kernel itself. There are no separate files like for an nvidea card. And there is no split into free and proprietary drivers for AMD. The one thats build in works fine.

firmware-amd-graphics adds firmware files for AMD graphics chips to /lib/firmware/amdgpu so that they are available during boot time. They are only pulled if an AMD graphics card is detected. No need to remove them. They will not hurt.

Thanks for the explain; so if I want to stay with nouveau then I shouldn't install it. Right now nouveau is driving my temporary nvidia card, I presume that when I change the AMD card nouveau will simply use its non-proprietary AMD driver?

Otter: refer to https://otter-browser.org/

"listapt.txt" contains _all_ debian packages in the installed repositories (--installed or --manual-installed would do a selection like below).

You want to re-install the ones marked with "[installed]", not "[installed,automatic]". Have a good look at "[installed,local]", which were either downloaded or not in the current repositories.

cat listapt.txt | grep '\[installed,local\]'

Let's prepare the installation:
There will be errors; work on cleaned.list.txt, until apt succeeds. Then omit "-s" in the apt command.

cat listapt.txt | grep '\[installed\]' | awk -F/ '{print $1}' >cleaned.list.txt
apt install -s  $(cat cleaned.list.txt | awk '{printf"%s ", $0}') 

Too many errors? Maybe just the tasks for the big picture?

apt install  $(cat cleaned.list.txt | grep ^task | awk '{printf"%s ", $0}')

Hope this helps, and yes I'm about to do that myself.

nixer:
Google-earth-pro downloaded, installed, tested. Works just fine without the nvidia driver on nouveau.
Librewolf installed, a litlle footworky but hey...
About driver boot issues: booting recovery mode not always possible. I pulled the AMD card that blew and inserted my opld nvidia card but never got a chance to revert to nouveau on my Suse isnstallation. As a result I cannot boot it at all, would have to do it with chroot from another system but I won't bother. New AMD card is coming next week, Suse might just boot again after I install it (there will be no more nvidias).

StopAI:
Packlist written on desktop,

rolfie:

firmware-amd-graphics

found, installed for test, removed. Wasn't sure about it messing up my current and temporary operation ov nvidia card using nouveau.

chris2be8:
...done.  Nouveau is in fact in charge, the surprise was that google-earth work pretty good with it!
So I might just stay with nouveau after installing new AMD card. I'm no gamer and tyhe ONLY reasion I've been using the proprietary drivers was that before GE would not work without them.

Oustanding issues:

Install Otter web navigator?

How to get synaptic to use package list produced with

apt list > listapt.txt

?

chris@rigel:~/bin$ lspci | grep -i nvidia
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF104 [GeForce GTX 460] (rev a1)
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GF104 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)

Check the video card as follows (updating the address if necessary).

chris@rigel:~/bin$ lspci -v -s 01:00.0
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF104 [GeForce GTX 460] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
	Subsystem: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd GF104 [GeForce GTX 460]
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 34
	Memory at f4000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32M]
	Memory at e8000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
	Memory at e4000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=64M]
	I/O ports at ac00 [size=128]
	[virtual] Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: nvidia
	Kernel modules: nvidia

The last two lines should say nouveau if that's being used (I'm using the nvidia driver so I can run CUDA apps on the card).

An AMD graphics card requires a suitable kernel and the firmware-amd-graphics package.

How do I save the list of all my installed packages with Synaptic, or load them into it from a previous installation to see if any are missing?

Hello.

If I understand you correctly, you can do it this way:

create your system’s packages/applications list with a .txt file, using this command:

apt list > listapt.txt

The above command generates a list of installed packages/applications and then outputs them to the file “listapt.txt”.

Maybe from flatpak?

For librewolf,  don't know about Otter
https://librewolf.net/installation/debian/

As for the synaptic file for installed packages, a web search is your friend as I know it can be done.  But, I have never done it, yet.

For the video card issue, I suggest to download the video drivers needed before changing the cards, then install after the hardware change.  If after changing the hardware the X desktop does not come up, you may have to boot into recovery mode to install the drivers.  This is what I have done on several occasions.

How do I get google-earth-pro installed (it's not in Synaptic)?

Ditto for Librewolf & Otter web-navigators

How do I save the list of all my installed packages with Synaptic, or load them into it from a previous installation to see if any are missing?

I have a temporary nvidia graphics card, getting an AMD one in a few days. I  t h i n k   that nouveau is being used, how can I verify and what will I need to do when I get my AMD one (if anything)?  Last I checked google-earth was not nice to see without a proprietary 3d ax driver.