Fedora 36 Jam spin boots to black screen and cursor

The title says pretty much everything needed. A cursory search shows that this KDE bug has been around in various forms for some time. I am currently unable to even get a proper boot of the installation media, to install on my computer, despite no errors when media is checked.

Basic computer specs:
Motherboard: AsusTek Prime Z390-A
Processor: 8-core Intel Core i9-9900KS Kaby Lake
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

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I have the same issue with the KDE Plasma desktop spin.
I can get to a GUI by using [Troubleshooting → basic graphics mode]*. This is helpful but the resolution is off and only uses one monitor.
If I use the normal boot option and get to the black screen with a cursor I can press [ctrl]+[esc] to open the system monitor (again might be different name, I am new to linux), and then use that to launch the terminal. Both these open as windows with KDE theming and style, and have correct resolution and scaling on both monitors.
I found some info that I could install nvidia drivers, but the instructions start with a system update which I cannot complete due to lack of space on the usb partition. (usb is 32GB so that isn’t the limiting factor)

Hardware:
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super

*Edit: I miss remembered the menu items so I updated to the correct terms.
Original: “the Troubleshooting menu and selecting the compatibility mode (might be a different name as I am getting that from memory)”

Sauce-man8: Even with basic graphics you can install the system? :slight_smile: After that you can install the proprietary nvidia driver if you wish

globetrotterdk: You would need to edit the grub Fedora live boot option by hitting ‘e’ and adding ‘nomodeset’ next to ‘quiet’ for instance. You can also choose ‘Troubleshooting → basic graphics mode’, I think it’s more or less the same thing. From there like above. Edit. Oh, I’m not familiar with the ‘jam’ spin, what I wrote may not apply (but logically it or very similar should)

Thanks for the reply!
If my issue is different enough from globetrotterdk it might be best to create a separate topic. The original issue sounds similar to my experience so I thought more examples would help.

I plan on installing soon, but I’m not ready to mess with my main internal storage yet. I was hoping to be able to explore Fedora KDE first to make sure it was the right fit for me before a full install. Fedora Workstation (GNOME) does work, but isn’t what I wanted to try. I added ‘nomodeset’ to my boot option (It didn’t work before because I wasn’t using the UEFI boot option :sweat_smile:) and it did basically the same as ‘basic graphics mode’, though I think the resolution was slightly higher with ‘nomodeset’

From what I gather Fedora Jam is Fedora KDE with some software prepacked for music creation/production. (iso is named Fedora-Jam_KDE-Live-x86_64-36-1.5.iso)

After a bit more digging it looks like proprietary Nvidia drivers are broken on 36 link.
For now 35 should be used to avoid graphics issues.
Fedora 35 iso

I thought fresh installs used the open source drivers, but maybe KDE does not.

Hi, aha, fair enough to want to explore the Live system at a decent display res : )

My system (36 KDE) (rtx 2060) isn’t experiencing the issue linked to but the issue does say ‘some systems’.

As far as I’m aware and in my experience Fedora KDE like the other Fedoras (and many other distros) don’t come bundled with the proprietary nvidia driver. I installed mine via rpmfusion as per the documentation.

This looks doable. I have tested it to see if I could get a desktop. I will try to install this weekend. Curious about the manual install of Nvidia drivers from RPM Fusion repos, as to my understanding Nvidia drivers are now (finally) open source… Shouldn’t it be possible to include them with the install configuration?

I hope you are able to resolve all the issues after install, and that my similar issue helps your original case.

To your question about now open source Nvidia drivers, desktop drivers are still “alpha-quality”. And it will take some time for improvements to be implemented into a distro’s install, from distro devs or Nvidia devs. Nvidia Article on drivers

I also was able to get a live usb to boot with Fedora Workstation (GNOME). If you are not set on KDE you might find easier success using Workstation and installing the Jam programs after. (I’m not sure if KDE has better support for those programs so your mileage may vary) With my success with GNOME this black screen with cursor may come down more to KDE then Fedora or drivers.

Thanks for the info. I am currently testing various options to get my audio production (such as it is) going in Fedora again. I really like Fedora Cinnamon and am considering going that route, but have been unsure of real time implementation when using a Fedora spin other than Jam, in reference to real time kernel implementation.

$ sudo dnf groupinstall "Audio Production"

installs the group of course, but it is a bit unclear to me as to whether it is necessary to create a /etc/security/limits.d/95-jack.conf file and add:

@jackuser  -   rtprio           95
@jackuser  -   memlock     unlimited

as the file doesn’t appear to exist in Fedora Jam…

My solution (unless I change my mind at some point) was to install Fedora 36 Cinnamon spin. Interestingly, none of the resolution issues that I experienced with Fedora Jam (KDE) and I have yet to install Nvidia drivers. I will probably add the audio production group, but have so far only added:

$ sudo dnf install pipewire-jack-audio-connection-kit qjackctl -y

which is necessary, rather than the old:

$ sudo dnf install jack-audio-connection-kit qjackctl -y

I have also installed the Xanmod real time kernel from the COPR repository…