NVIDIA vs Nouveau drivers

Ask Fedora
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I am providing the following information to install NVIDIA drivers, because Nouveau drivers were causing so many problems on my laptop. I contacted https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/ and received no response. That makes me feel they have a take-it or leave-it attitude. The installation instructions I found were difficult to understand. So in layman terms, I tested the procedure below and it worked for me on my Fedora 40 distro.

NVIDIA Releases Major Driver Update 560.35.03 for Linux x64 Systems

# = Notation

$ = CLI prompt

$ /sbin/lspci | grep -e VGA

(lists compatiable video cards)

CUDA Installation Guide for Linux

(gcc not installed by default)

$ sudo dnf groupinstall ā€˜Development Toolsā€™

(installs everyting including gcc)

NVIDIA driver download link:

https://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/560.35.03/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-560.35.03.run

copy file to ~/Downloads

Set File Permissions > Executable as Program > ON

Set Custom Permissions

Read and Write: Owner, Group, Others

Shut down X-Server (Run Levels in Linux - GeeksforGeeks)

$ sudo init 3

$ login:

$ cd ~/Downloads

$ sudo ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-560.35.03.run

note the period preceding the forward slash

$ enter

didnā€™t install 32-bit files

install completes, power OFF, power ON

$ sudo dnf upgrade --refresh

done

2

Do not follow this guide!

It is strongly recommended to install nvidia drivers packaged by rpmfusion

5 Likes
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I agree :100:

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Ok. But that is exactly the type of information or lack thereof. I did a lot of searching and posted what I found. But for you to say just use rpmfusion doesnā€™t help me at all. If you have something to add that is better or more correct. Iā€™m open. But post a How To.

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https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIA

1 Like
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That is hard to believe. I just tested it with the search term ā€œnvidia driver install fedoraā€ on Google and Duckduckgo search engines. On one it is the second search result, on the other it is the fourth result.

If I include the term ā€œrpmfusionā€, the right Howto comes up in first place on both search engines.

Fyi, among others, one problem with the driver packaged by nvidia is that it is hard or impossible to cleanly remove it.

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Added proposed-howto and removed server