Browsers Not Respoding

Ask Fedora
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1

Hello,

I’m using Fedora 43 with the following setup:

  • GPU: NVIDIA GTX 1060 (proprietary driver installed, working – nvidia-smi OK)
  • CPU: Ryzen 7 7700X (with AMD iGPU)
  • Session: Wayland (default GNOME)

Problem:
Browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Brave Browser frequently freeze and show “Not Responding”.

What I found so far:

  • If I disable Hardware Acceleration → browsers become stable, but performance drops
  • journalctl shows repeated errors from amdgpu:
    Failed to create link encoder
  • It seems like conflict between AMD iGPU and NVIDIA on Wayland

What I tried:

  • Installed NVIDIA drivers (akmod-nvidia) → working
  • Tried forcing X11 (WaylandEnable=false) → resulted in no GUI (only TTY)
  • Tried MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=0 → partial improvement

Question:
What is the best way to run browsers with hardware acceleration ON without freezes?
Should I:

  • disable AMD iGPU completely?
  • switch to X11 (and how properly on Fedora 43)?
  • or is there a better Wayland + NVIDIA configuration?

Any help would be appreciated :folded_hands:

3

Probably a good idea to either rule it out or rule it in scope for the root cause.

I’d say this was not a great idea. X11 is vanishing and won’t be coming back. If you really want to hang on to it, switch to a desktop which still fully supports it. There are some spins which still roll out of the door with X11 as the default..

4

I’m done, I’ve tried everything, but it’s no use, I’d better find another distro

5

That won’t work on f43 with either Workstation or KDE editions. Both have totally dropped support for X11.

As suggested above there are some fedora spins that still support X11.

6

I installed KDE, and it works fine but this is also:gukakhachidze@fedora:~$ echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE~
wayland~
gukakhachidze@. How i can fix it on gnome

7

gnome use wayland too actually longest time from fedora 15 To make work hardware acceleration follow Hardware Video Acceleration - Fedora Project Wiki before install free and non-free repos from rpmfusion Making sure you're not a bot!

8

You can try to lauch it using switcherooctl launch firefox

Also, are you running firefox from the repo or flatpak?

9

flatpak

Screenshot From 2026-03-23 09-31-47
Screenshot From 2026-03-23 09-31-47994×724 138 KB

10

Thanks for the tip! I have a GTX 1060 6GB. Will this actually work for me? I’ve heard that since the 1060 is based on the older Pascal architecture, it has syncing issues with GNOME on Wayland. I was told that enabling hardware video acceleration on this specific card usually causes browsers to freeze and show ‘Not Responding’ errors

11

I had the same issue with my Ryzen 2600/ GTX1060. I got everything working, and running with no crash for the last 3 days.
One caveat: suspend (computer sleep mode) does not work. It didn’t work for me before anyway, so it’s probably the same for you;

The fix disables saving VRAM to file when the GPU switched to power mode P8. This assumes you are using the fauilty akmod driver. The source of the problem is a regressive bug in the power management of Pascal GPUs causing a crash when used alongside Ozone, a GPU abstraction layer used by Chromium and Firefox and also by Electron-based apps like vscode. The fix is quite simple.

Add a configuration option for your system, and re-generate your boot image:

$ echo “options nvidia NVreg_PreserveVideoMemoryAllocations=0” | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-browser-fix.conf && sudo dracut --force && sudo reboot

After reboot, check it worked:
$ cat /proc/driver/nvidia/params | grep PreserveVideoMemoryAllocations

Re-enable GPU acceleration in your browser, vscode, and any other application using ozone as GPU acceleration layer.

If it does not work for you, you can revert by removing the custom boot option:

$ sudo rm /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-browser-fix.conf && sudo dracut --force && sudo reboot

I use x11, with i3. I was given the choice, so I went out the door.

12

Those are mostly not true.

With the nvidia 580 driver that GPU is well supported and works well with wayland and hardware acceleration.

If, however, you have upgraded to fedora 44 then the newer driver (595 series) does not support the 1060.
In that case you would need to revert to the (now legacy) 580 driver with:

  1. remove the nvidia drivers with sudo dnf remove \*nvidia\* --exclude nvidia-gpu-firmware
  2. If not already done, enable the rpmfusion-nonfree repos as shown here
  3. install the proper nvidia driver with sudo dnf install akmod-nvidia-580xx xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-580xx-cuda
  4. reboot and enjoy.
13

The problem with browser video playback will remain even with the 580xx driver branch, and even after upgrading to Fedora 44. The issue is a driver bug. That said, installing the 580xx driver has become a must for Pascal GPUs. And as for Wayland and nvidia, it is what it is.