I installed Fedora on my old ThinkPad e530.
Specs (if it matters):
CPU: Intel Core i5-3210M,
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4000 and NVIDIA GeForce GT 635M,
RAM: 4GB
I enabled third party repositories at installation phase.
I downloaded and installed the free and nonfree repositories for Fedora 40 from RMP Fusion.
After that I ran
sudo dnf akmod-nvidia
which I think had some issues during installation, since it didn’t write Completed?
I think after that (I am new, so didn’t think much of the missing “Completed” until later package installations and recognizing the pattern) I ran:
sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda libva-nvidia-driver
After rebooting I got the message: “NVIDIA kermel module missing. Falling back to nouveau.”
So I decided to try reinstalling the first part that seemed a bit off after installation
sudo dnf reinstall akmod-nvidia
And this time it did, for some reason, install with the message “Completed!” at the end.
After rebooting I still get the message about the missing module.
I’ve checked BIOS and my secure boot is disabled.
Should I just uninstall and install everything again and if so, could someone plese help me how to do so?
I would appreciate any help
UPDATE with solution:
I took @leigh123linux , @computersavvy and @ledeni advise and combined them, and so far it seems the drivers are working.
I would like to thank each of you! Thanks to you, I will be able to run my nvidia on Fedora, at least for a while
Big thanks to @leigh123linux , @computersavvy and @ledeni !
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Installed Fedora 40 KDE + added the X11 pack (which isn’t already present after installation) with
sudo dnf install plasma-workspace-x11
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Installed 390 drivers for the nvidia card as per the RPM Fusion documentation
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There is still a slight issue, and that is that upon startup the screen was black, but no cursor like before, but rather an underline character on the upper most left corrner (that persisted for a few minutes so I force restart the computer)
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Edited the kernel and set the
nvidia-drn.modeset=0
After saving and exiting I was able to enter the login screen and entered with X11 Plasma DE selected
This is what the Fedora system info shows now:
Operating System: Fedora Linux 40
KDE Plasma Version: 6.2.0
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.7.0
Qt Version: 6.7.2
Kernel Version: 6.11.3-200.fc40.x86_64 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 4 × Intel® Core™ i5-3210M CPU @ 2.50GHz
Memory: 3.4 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: GeForce GT 635M/PCIe/SSE2
Manufacturer: LENOVO
Product Name: 3259KNG
System Version: ThinkPad Edge E530
lspci -k | grep -A 2 -i "vga"
returns:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF108M [GeForce GT 635M] (rev a1)
Subsystem: Lenovo Device 5001
Kernel driver in use: nvidia
I still have to figure out how to permanently edit the kernel so that nvidia-drn.modeset stays set at 0.
On the sight note, I might have been too impatient and force restarted too quickly, so it might have worked, but it took some time - will edit this part after I figure out.