It would be useful to get some more info.

1. how did you install the drivers?

2. what do you mean by lightdm doesn't work?

3. can you get some logs from a terminal? Like journalctl -xe? If your gui isnt coming up you could get these from tty1 by using ctrl+alt+f1.

I haven't used nvidia in a long time but use debian daily. I'd expect if you installed the drivers using a supported method it would do stuff like initramfs etc automatically if required.

I'm sure you already found this but just in case here is the official documentation; https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers

for posterity: I don't think that was it (although it does seem to be a common issue especially when you have an SSD). I never did try initramfs modification (not correctly anyway, I don't think).

Problem was resolved by purging nvidia, and installing the driver manually. There also appears to be an issue with the secure boot signature, so for the time being I addressed it by disabling secure boot. Another day's problem. edit: so it was likely never a race condition issue, it was likely secure boot rejecting the keys. It should be easily resolvable, even if I need to purge again, reinstall, and put the key in the proper place, but I'm ok for now given whats on this machine, what it has access to, and other shit I have to do.

edit: I forgot, I confirmed that the system is, infact properly utelizing the driver to get the most out of the card.