System doesn't boot after switching to nvidia driver

Ask Fedora
1

Hello everybody,

I am new to Linux and I choose to turn an unused home server build into a PC with fedora workshop as the operating system. I have an intel CPU with integrated graphics and a GeForce GT 730 graphics card installed.

I was able to install everything normally and I ran dnf upgrade, installed rpm free and non free and tried gaming a bit. I am not frequent gamer and with this GPU you can’t game a lot, but I want to make it work with it. Until now everything worked and rebooting worked normally.

I read that the nouveau driver aren’t that good so I followed rpm’s guide for installing the nvidia driver for my card. After that I tried rebooting and now I am stuck with that screen:

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880591920×1440 465 KB

I tried a akmods rebuild and another dnf upgrade but that didn’t change anything. I don’t know what to do and I couldn’t find a topic with the same problem although with similar sounding ones. I ran two diagnostic commands which might be helpful…

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880631920×1440 266 KB

I hope someone is able to help me. I tried to research my problem but I am a noob so that didn’t help me

Greetings
Oliver

2

Which nvidia drivers did you install? The GT 730 isn’t supported by the current drivers. You need to install the old 470.x drivers.

3

I followed the rpm fusion guide and installed the 470xx driver as well as nvidia 470xx-cuda (whatever cuda is)

4

Is it a desktop? If so, is the monitor plugged into the nvidia card?

5

It’s plugged into the motherboard. The GPU doesn’t post anything.

6

You also need to be aware that the nvidia 470 driver does not support wayland and only is suitable for an X11 desktop AND that fedora 43 does not support X11 on either workstation or KDE, though there is at least one of the spins that does use an X11 desktop.

I don’t use those spins so am not certain which one(s) do support X11.

7

xfce, cinamon and mate are not fully ready for wayland, so they should be considered X11 only.

1 Like
8

Re-installing one of those spins would force you to also re-install
the nvidia drivers from rpmfusion: rather tedious IMO.

I think that you can switch to such a spin, for example to mate,
without re-installing, by executing the following commands from a
textual console (good that you managed to find how to use that):

sudo systemctl stop display-manager
sudo systemctl disable gdm
sudo dnf -y install @mate-desktop-environment
sudo systemctl --now enable lightdm
9

I won’t be able to use fedora workstation or KDE with nvidia drivers for this gpu? I would like to stay at gnome or switch to KDE but mate and the other DEs mentioned don’t look that nice imo. So I can either use the spins mentioned, use the open source driver or choose another distro? I get why people don’t like nvidia…

10

Is xwayland something I could try or is that a bad idea especially considering me being new to linux?

11

xwayland runs on top of wayland, so can’t be used with the Nvidia 470xx driver. I have an old iMac that needs the same 470xx driver. The nouveau driver is adequate for web browsing and email. I installed the cinnamon-desktop package for use with the Nvidia 470xx driver. I can force a switch between the nouveau and 470xx driver by editing /etc/gdm/custom.conf to add or remove the # (comment mark) from the line with # WaylandEnable=false. With the Nvidia 470xx installed and the # in place, Wayland is enabled by default, and nouveau is loaded as a “fallback” from the 470xx driver, and I select Gnome at login. When the # is not present, I select Xorg at login.

One side effect is that Gnome gets some Cinnamon icons, but in general, both environments are usable without having to remove he 470xx driver.

12

Nvidia has decided, with reason, to not continue supporting the older GPUs for linux. It costs time and effort for their developers to provide the drivers for newer kernels and older GPUs. They do not get paid for the drivers, but only for the GPU itself and very few of that age are still in use, with none new being purchased. Only good business sense.

Dropping support for X11 was forced by the switch to wayland for almost all linux distros. In fact the 470 driver, the last to support those cards with X11 only, was still supported directly by nvidia for more than 5 years after the cards were produced.

An alternative to complaining might be to purchase a newer GPU (the supported ones with the newest driver (590) are the GTX 16 series and newer) or to accept that if you choose to continue to use the old GT 730 GPU (circa 2014 vintage) it is still quite usable with the nouveau drivers on all fedora versions or limited to the particular editions that continue to support the X11 DE when using the nvidia driver. The newer driver that is presently in use (580) still supports the 900 and 10 series cards with wayland.

13

Have you tested it to check if it’s good enough for your needs? I would start there.

The GT 730 GPU was never useful for gaming or other demanding workloads, not even when it was released, 11 years ago. Yes, technically, you will lose some performance with the open source driver - BUT, does that even matter, when the performance is basically non-existent, anyway? For rendering the desktop, it should be fine regardless.

I suggest you save yourself the headache and use the open source driver if it works for your needs. And if it doesn’t, then you can get a RTX 3050 for $150, which would also get you the benefit of hardware decode for VP9 and AV1. Or if you want to go even lower budget, an Arc A310 would give you modern codec support for $110 and not require you to install proprietary drivers.

14

KDE is continuing to have support for the X11 session until early 2027. I would imagine LTS distros will be carrying that version even longer.

You might consider switching to an LTS distro which would let you get you a few more years of life out of that GPU.

15

Thanks for all of your help. I have removed the nvidia drivers and everything is working again. I will stay with fedora workstation and buy a different gpu in the future.

1 Like
16

I can tell you that Xfce4 works Just Fine with X11 as I’ve been using it ever since just before Gnome 3 came out. It also worked great with the rpmfusion nVidia drivers when I had that kind of card.