Fedora 43 for AM5 - will it work?

Ask Fedora
1

I admit, I am a Ubuntu user (perhaps soon not to be!?) …
But after I bought my new rig : AM5 (x870), Ryzen 9700x and nvidia RTX 5060Ti…I can no longer run Ubuntu reliably. It just freezes despite my efforts to stabilize it (my linux grub line is horrendous). It’s all due to platform instability between AMD BIOS (1.2.7.0) and related timings. Ubuntu can’t handle it. Which is why I came to Fedora. I read that Fedora is the “reference” linux for AMD. It’s where AMD engineers test their development for Linux. And Fedora, I read, is current with the latest patches which might give me stability. Can anyone verify this is true/likely? I’d hate to install Fedora and have the same freeze-ups I am getting now. But if it works - I’m done with Ubuntu. Thanks for any insights and help. (This system is rock solid in Windows - but I want Linux to work too)

2

I can’t speak for your Nvidia card, but my 9900X on a B850 board is rock solid on Fedora.

3

The RTX 5060Ti card can only work with the latest nvidia driver (which is available on rpmfusion).

That card is not supported by the older proprietary driver but only with the newer ‘open source’ driver that is installed following those instructions.

I cannot address the specific AMD issues, but there are several threads here about the kernel command line needs and users that can assist in pointing you the right direction to simplify the command line. Perhaps @l-c-g can tell you what works for him.

4

I didn’t have to do anything special in terms of kernel commandline.

It took me a while to get the system stable in the beginning, it seems the memory controller in my CPU doesn’t like the 6000MT/s of my memory kit. No matter what I tried (increased SOC voltage, more relaxed timings, etc.), Prime95 and yCruncher kept throwing errors after 30min to several hours.

After two weeks of trying different things, I finally set the RAM to 5800MT/s. With this, I could run tight timings and lower the voltage from the 1.4V set in EXPO, and it has been perfectly stable since. (Sure, it’s slightly slower than 6000MT/s, but the performance difference wasn’t worth it for me to keep chasing the issue or to buy more hardware to test. I want a system that is stable and that I can trust to not compute incorrect results.)

1 Like
5

Nvidia just released a new 590 driver which I will need to install to go with Fedora. Is there a way to do this simply? (In Ubuntu I would load a ppa: and list drivers (Ubuntu-drivers list). If I can get the 590 driver to work with Fedora 43 (no reason why it shouldn’t), I can say goodbye to Ubuntu and make the switch.

6

As I suggested above, installation of the nvidia driver from rpmfusion is the preferred method since it then configures the system to support the installed card with the tweaks needed for fedora. You can install the 580.119.02 driver from rpmfusion today and your card would be fully supported. Then upgrade to the 590 version when rpmfusion makes it available.

You can install from other sources, but IME the most stable is from rpmfusion.

A little patience while the developers at rpmfusion tweak the installation process to work on fedora can be a good thing.

A second (and very critical consideration) is that up thru the 580 drivers there were several card series that continued to be supported. The 590 driver is dropping support for all cards in the 10 series and older. Rpmfusion needs to address the needs of users that will still require the 580 drivers while also making the 590 driver available and that will require some time.

7

In general Fedora should work well on AMD systems. It has been working well on my system below. You might want to put Fedora on a USB flash drive and boot a live image. This will allow you to test it out and see how it works. One thing to watch out for is if you need WiFi, those newer AMD motherboards often use a WiFi chip that the company is behind on Linux driver support in the kernel. I can never remember if it’s Mediatek or Realtek, but one of them. So if you need WiFi, test it out in the live USB environment before installing. But since Fedora uses a much newer kernel than Ubuntu, it is your best bet for supporting newer hardware.

Your only complication is using an Nvidia GPU is more complicated but doable if you follow the RPMFusion driver install instructions.


Machine:
  Type: Desktop System: ASUS product: N/A v: N/A serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: ASUSTeK model: ProArt X670E-CREATOR WIFI v: Rev 1.xx
    serial: <superuser required> part-nu: SKU UEFI: American Megatrends v: 3402
    date: 11/12/2025
CPU:
  Info: 16-core model: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Zen 4
    rev: 2 cache: L1: 1024 KiB L2: 16 MiB L3: 64 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 4949 min/max: 425/5883 boost: enabled cores: 1: 4949
    2: 4949 3: 4949 4: 4949 5: 4949 6: 4949 7: 4949 8: 4949 9: 4949 10: 4949
    11: 4949 12: 4949 13: 4949 14: 4949 15: 4949 16: 4949 17: 4949 18: 4949
    19: 4949 20: 4949 21: 4949 22: 4949 23: 4949 24: 4949 25: 4949 26: 4949
    27: 4949 28: 4949 29: 4949 30: 4949 31: 4949 32: 4949 bogomips: 288010
  Flags-basic: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a
    ssse3 svm