NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 driver issue on Fedora 43 (previously worked on Fedora 42)

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Hi everyone,

I’m having trouble installing the NVIDIA drivers from RPM Fusion for my NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 GPU on my computer with Intel(R) Core™ i5-4430 (4) @ 3.20 GHz.
I know this hardware is a bit old, but everything was working fine up until the last update and kernel of Fedora 42 — I only had to tweak a few things to make GNOME apps and YouTube videos in Firefox work properly.

Now, on Fedora 43, I’ve tried installing the 390xx drivers, but without success.
After rebooting, the screen goes black before reaching GDM, and I can’t log in.
I also tried forcing module compilation using akmods, but that didn’t help either.

Has anyone had success getting this GPU to work on Fedora 43, or any ideas on how to fix this issue?
I’m wondering if it’s still possible to use this older CPU and GPU combination with the newer Fedora kernels.

❯ fastfetch
             .',;::::;,'.                 chris@fedora
         .';:cccccccccccc:;,.             ------------
      .;cccccccccccccccccccccc;.          OS: Fedora Linux 43 (Workstation Edition) x86_64
    .:cccccccccccccccccccccccccc:.        Kernel: Linux 6.17.5-300.fc43.x86_64
  .;ccccccccccccc;.:dddl:.;ccccccc;.      Uptime: 3 mins
 .:ccccccccccccc;OWMKOOXMWd;ccccccc:.     Packages: 2038 (rpm), 21 (flatpak-system), 1 (flatpak-user)
.:ccccccccccccc;KMMc;cc;xMMc;ccccccc:.    Shell: zsh 5.9
,cccccccccccccc;MMM.;cc;;WW:;cccccccc,    Display (VSC732E): 1920x1080 @ 60 Hz in 23" [External]
:cccccccccccccc;MMM.;cccccccccccccccc:    DE: GNOME 49.1
:ccccccc;oxOOOo;MMM000k.;cccccccccccc:    WM: Mutter (Wayland)
cccccc;0MMKxdd:;MMMkddc.;cccccccccccc;    WM Theme: Adwaita
ccccc;XMO';cccc;MMM.;cccccccccccccccc'    Theme: Adwaita [GTK2/3/4]
ccccc;MMo;ccccc;MMW.;ccccccccccccccc;     Icons: Adwaita [GTK2/3/4]
ccccc;0MNc.ccc.xMMd;ccccccccccccccc;      Font: Adwaita Sans (11pt) [GTK2/3/4]
cccccc;dNMWXXXWM0:;cccccccccccccc:,       Cursor: Adwaita (24px)
cccccccc;.:odl:.;cccccccccccccc:,.        Terminal: Ptyxis 49.1
ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc:'.          Terminal Font: JetBrains Mono (14pt)
:ccccccccccccccccccccccc:;,..             CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4430 (4) @ 3.20 GHz
 ':cccccccccccccccc::;,.                  GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 [Discrete]
                                          Memory: 3.43 GiB / 15.40 GiB (22%)
                                          Swap: 0 B / 8.00 GiB (0%)
                                          Disk (/): 19.45 GiB / 220.98 GiB (9%) - btrfs
                                          Local IP (enp0s25): 192.168.1.129/24
                                          Locale: en_US.UTF-8                                                                  
~
❯

What I’ve tried so far

Installed the drivers
Add the RPM Fusion repositories.

sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-390xx akmod-nvidia-390xx

1. Checked Wayland settings:

sudo nano /etc/gdm/custom.conf
# Confirmed this line exists and is uncommented
WaylandEnable=false

2. Verified GRUB configuration:

Made sure it’s blocking nouveau and also the experimental nova_core driver.

3. Forced module compilation:

sudo akmods --force && sudo dracut --force

4. Checked the module files:

/usr/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/extra/nvidia*
nvidia.ko.xz  
nvidia-drm.ko.xz  
nvidia-modeset.ko.xz  
nvidia-uvm.ko.xz

5. Checked if the NVIDIA modules were loaded:

lsmod | grep nvidia

This command didn’t show any output, before or after reboot.

Any suggestions or success stories with this GPU on Fedora 43 would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

2

The 390xx driver supports only X11, not Wayland. So it won’t work on Fedora 43, because that ships GNOME 49 which is Wayland-only.

Your choices really are to use the GPU on Wayland with the nouveau drivers (by unblacklisting them in the GRUB setup), to stay on Fedora 42 for now (it will be supported for another ~6 months) or to switch to a different DE which still supports X11.

1 Like
4

This thread discusses a similar situation:

5

I am not even sure the 390 driver will properly compile on f43.
I am absolutely certain that the 390 driver does not work with wayland, and that f43 has completely dropped support for x11..

If you want to continue using that GT 610 GPU then it is important that you use a driver that will function with wayland for f43. This means you first remove all nvidia drivers (sudo dnf remove \*nvidia\* --exclude nvidia-gpu-firmware. Then reboot.

If the nouveau driver does not properly load then it may be necessary to reboot and from the grub menu press e to edit the kernel command line (the line that begins with linux) and remove the part of the line that reads rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau,nova_core modprobe.blacklist=nouveau,nova_core (or similar) then continue booting with ‘ctrl-X’. The entry may read rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau modprobe.blacklist=nouveau when the 390 driver was installed.

If that part still exists when booting it may be necessary to manually remove it from the grub config. `sudo grubby --update-kernel=ALL --remove-args=‘rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau,nova_core modprobe.blacklist=nouveau,nova_core’