Can Nvidia Prime in Fedora 37 Support Offloading a New Browser Window?

Ask Fedora
1

For example, there isn’t an option in the Gnome dock right click menu for me to launch a new Firefox window offloaded to the dGPU when there are already other windows opened using the iGPU.

So instead of using the Gnome dock, I tried using the following alias to launch a new Firefox window offloaded to the dGPU:

__NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia firefox

But upon opening up nvtop to check the dGPU’s usage, it is at 0%. I know this is possible since I used the prime-run firefox command in Arch linux and it was properly offloaded.

Am I missing something here? Is it possible that this is a cutting edge feature that has not yet merged into Fedora’s repository yet?

I should mention that offloading a fresh app using both the Gnome menu and CLI works fine. Offloading a second terminal window (alacritty) using the CLI is fine, but there is no option in the Gnome menu to do so.

2

https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/does-anyone-know-how-to-launch-an-application-using-open-source-nvdia-driver-using-terminal/69679/2

Try testing apps with no active instances, otherwise I’m afraid it may not work properly.

3

Yes, I have mentioned that “fresh” apps are perfectly fine. Along with terminal windows.

Firefox seems to be the only one that behaves weird, but I know it if possible since I have done so in Arch Linux.

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4

Does your laptop have an nvidia dGPU?
If so then have you installed the nvidia drivers from rpmfusion?

Please post the output of inxi -Fzxx so we can see the hardware involved.
Also lsmod | grep nvidia

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5

Yes, I don’t have it with me, so I will list what I can:
Thinkpad W550s
i7-5600U
Nvidia K620m

Followed this guide:
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/solution-easy-prime-setup-using-nvidia-auto-installer-for-fedora/75901

6

That is a good guide to follow. It actually is a very good way to get the nvidia drivers installed and functioning.

The link in that post,

is what you should use to make it possible for the nvidia GPU to manage all the graphics and both the internal laptop screen as well as the external screen.

The tool you used for installing the drivers managed everything thru step 7 on that page, so you would need to start with step 7 to verify the drivers are active, then proceed from step 8 onward.

Copying the nvidia.conf file will make it possible for the nvidia gpu to manage the laptop screen (by default it can only access external monitors) and editing it as suggested will make it possible to use the nvidia gpu exclusively so the iGPU is essentially idled and never used.

Note though, that doing so only takes affect when the user logs in with xorg and does not function when using wayland.

7
  1. I can verify that Nvidia prime is working for some apps
  2. Also that the Nvidia can access the laptop screen

Therefore, the reason why Firefox doesn’t work is not due to improper installation.

8

Apparently there’s some difference that makes the app prefer inheriting the environment from the active instance if any, rather than creating its own separate one.

So, you need to compare build flags, startup scripts, and default settings for the Firefox package in Arch and Fedora to determine the cause of this behavior.

You can fetch the related information for Fedora here:
https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/firefox/tree/rawhide

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