I’ve been using Fedora a few months now and one of the things that really would have helped ease my transition from Windows would have been something like the Windows Device Manager.
As much as people say “just go install the rpmfusion repos”, this is far from intuitive to someone who has been using Windows from 3.11 days. Especially because even after installing them and refreshing the repos, Discover STILL couldn’t find any trace of the word “Nvidia” in the entire rpmfusion repo. So of course I resorted to CLI. Not obscenely difficult by any stretch of the imagination. But I still much prefer a simple device manager GUI that allows me a very easy and quick interface with which to troubleshoot or install drivers etc.
It’s not like there aren’t many distros that include such apps. Pop, Pika, Mint etc. All include some form of GUI to one-click install GPU drivers for example.
So it got me wondering, does Fedora have something like that? Because I certainly haven’t been able to find it if it does.
I’m a huge fan of KDE, but Discover is probably their worst tool (((
As a windows escapee too since around 2022, would suggest you to try to get accustomed to the cli tools like lspci etc. It will make your whole linux experience way better and enjoyable. It’s really not that difficult especially with the help of modern AI.
unlike in windows, in Linux most drivers are already in the kernel, that’s why you can live boot any linux distro and virtually all hardware just works, so there’s little need in fiddling with drivers.
I just did a cursory check in Discover by searching “nvidia” (no quotes) and it came up with multiple drivers, so I’m not sure what the issue you were having was related to. I have the RPMfusion repos all enabled, as well.
It’s very inconsistent. Somtimes it finds it. Sometimes it doesn’t. So…IDK. I just find a dedicated driver install utility to be a lot more reliable than relying on whatever package manager or repo a distro happens to be using. Especially when it’s 3rd party. But yea, CLI always works I guess. It’s just not as noob friendly as a GUI.
Yes, I’m aware. It’s just the elephant in the room being Nvidia being the exception to that rule.
That being said, I’m in the process of building a new system and after my recent experience with Linux (as well as the absolute abysmal state both Intel and Nvidia hardware is in right now), I’ve planned a full AMD system instead. Ryzen CPU and Radeon GPU. Now with the added bonus of not burning my house down. So no more trying to figure out how to install GPU drivers for me!
The problem with an elephant is it takes a long time to eat one
But the good news is that there are new open sources NVidia drivers being worked on that will eventually replace the need to install the nvidia support as a seperate user action.
I’m not sure when these new drivers will be suitable for every day use, games and desktops etc.
But each kernel release abd mesa release has a bit more of the needed code in it.
I’d expect 2027 is closer to useable, but as I say I’m not sure on the time lines.
