Upgrading to F38 broke Xorg

I am using a laptop with a dedicated nvidia card (rtx 2070 max-q).

After I upgraded to fedora 38, my xorg gnome session became incredibly laggy, each action has a ~5 second delay, forcing me to use wayland. Wayland on my computer brings it’s own host of problems. Namely that flatpaks are blurry (I think they render at 1080p, while my laptop which is connected to a tv is set to 4k with 175% fractional scaling), hard crashes when the tv goes to sleep, dropped frames in gnome animations, dropped frames when watching youtube 4k, etc.

I have a timeshift rsync snapshot of before I upgraded, but would rather not have to rollback

Has anyone had similar experiences to me? Iirc this also happened to me when I upgraded from fedora 36 to 37, but resolved itself after a few weeks. I would rather be able to resolve the issue in the present though.

Do you have the nvidia drivers installed?
dnf list installed '*nvidia*' will show what is installed. Please post that output.

If the nvidia drivers are not installed then one cannot take advantage of the hardware acceleration from the GPU and the CPU is forced to manage graphics rendering – to the detriment of other actions.

Is the system fully updated? sudo dnf upgrade --refresh

Yes the nvidia drivers are installed like normal. I deleted and reinstalled them after the f38 upgrade through rpmfusion. I’ve also tested that they run through playing a bit of witcher 3 which is a demanding game for my laptop, all’s well in that end.

It seems the issues regarding skipped animation and youtube frames arise more in terms of wayland. However my main concern is how or why my Xorg sessions are so laggy now.

Is it possible that in the process of removing the nvidia drivers you may have also removed the nvidia-gpu-firmware package? dnf list installed nvidia-gpu-firmware should show it. If not then that package should be reinstalled. dnf install nvidia-gpu-firmware

We really need to see the output of dnf list installed '*nvidia*' as previously requested – which would have answered the question here.

You mentioned timeshift. Are you by chance using silverblue instead of the Workstation release?

You’re correct it seemed I did not have nvidia-gpu-firmware installed, which I reinstalled, thank you.

However, after I installed it and restarted, xorg is still in the same state as before.

I’m using fedora 38 workstation.

Here is the output for dnf list installed '*nvidia*'

Installed Packages
akmod-nvidia.x86_64                                                                          3:535.54.03-1.fc38                                                     @rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
kmod-nvidia-6.3.11-200.fc38.x86_64.x86_64                                                    3:535.54.03-1.fc38                                                     @@commandline                   
kmod-nvidia-6.3.12-200.fc38.x86_64.x86_64                                                    3:535.54.03-1.fc38                                                     @@commandline                   
kmod-nvidia-6.3.8-100.fc37.x86_64.x86_64                                                     3:535.54.03-1.fc38                                                     @@commandline                   
nvidia-gpu-firmware.noarch                                                                   20230625-151.fc38                                                      @updates                        
nvidia-persistenced.x86_64                                                                   3:535.54.03-1.fc38                                                     @rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
nvidia-settings.x86_64                                                                       3:535.54.03-1.fc38                                                     @rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia.x86_64                                                                   3:535.54.03-2.fc38                                                     @rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda.x86_64                                                              3:535.54.03-2.fc38                                                     @rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda-libs.i686                                                           3:535.54.03-2.fc38                                                     @rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda-libs.x86_64                                                         3:535.54.03-2.fc38                                                     @rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-kmodsrc.x86_64                                                           3:535.54.03-2.fc38                                                     @rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.i686                                                                3:535.54.03-2.fc38                                                     @rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.x86_64                                                              3:535.54.03-2.fc38                                                     @rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-power.x86_64                                                             3:535.54.03-2.fc38                                                     @rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver

You should mention whether you have applied all updates (including vendor BIOS) and which NVIDIA driver you are using.

It is helpful to include the output of inxa -Fzx (as text, using the </> button to bracket selected text with triple back-quotes). This not only gives us a better picture of the system hardware and software, but is also searchable so can be found by others with similar hardware and issues (more eyes often helps find solutions).

My operating system is up to date (dnf and flatpak). However my bios is not, this is on purpose because there’s too much downside risk to a bios update, due to this being a laptop I use for work. Especially since everything was working fine in f37 and I’m having these issues only since updating to f38. Below is my output for inxi -Fz

~  inxi -Fz              
System:
  Kernel: 6.3.12-200.fc38.x86_64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: GNOME v: 44.2
    Distro: Fedora release 38 (Thirty Eight)
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Micro-Star product: GS75 Stealth 8SF v: REV:1.0
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: Micro-Star model: MS-17G1 v: REV:1.0 serial: <superuser required>
    UEFI: American Megatrends v: E17G1IMS.103 date: 01/03/2019
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT1 charge: 56.3 Wh (94.6%) condition: 59.5/80.3 Wh (74.1%)
CPU:
  Info: 6-core model: Intel Core i7-8750H bits: 64 type: MT MCP cache:
    L2: 1.5 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 3400 min/max: 800/4100 cores: 1: 3400 2: 3400 3: 3400
    4: 3400 5: 3400 6: 3400 7: 3400 8: 3400 9: 3401 10: 3400 11: 3400 12: 3400
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel CoffeeLake-H GT2 [UHD Graphics 630] driver: i915 v: kernel
  Device-2: NVIDIA TU106M [GeForce RTX 2070 Mobile] driver: nvidia
    v: 535.54.03
  Device-3: Bison HD Webcam driver: uvcvideo type: USB
  Display: wayland server: X.Org v: 22.1.9 with: Xwayland v: 22.1.9
    compositor: gnome-shell driver: X: loaded: modesetting,nvidia
    unloaded: fbdev,nouveau,vesa dri: iris gpu: i915,nvidia,nvidia-nvswitch
    resolution: 2560x1440~30Hz
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 Mesa 23.1.3 renderer: Mesa Intel UHD Graphics 630 (CFL
    GT2)
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Cannon Lake PCH cAVS driver: snd_hda_intel
  Device-2: NVIDIA TU106 High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
  API: ALSA v: k6.3.12-200.fc38.x86_64 status: kernel-api
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 0.3.74 status: active
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Cannon Lake PCH CNVi WiFi driver: iwlwifi
  IF: wlo1 state: up mac: <filter>
  Device-2: Qualcomm Atheros Killer E2500 Gigabit Ethernet driver: alx
  IF: enp3s0 state: down mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-1: br-d8563c655996 state: down mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-2: docker0 state: down mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Intel Bluetooth 9460/9560 Jefferson Peak (JfP) driver: btusb
    type: USB
  Report: rfkill ID: hci0 state: up address: see --recommends
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 8.67 TiB used: 4.63 TiB (53.3%)
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Western Digital model: WD Blue SN570 1TB
    size: 931.51 GiB
  ID-2: /dev/nvme1n1 vendor: Samsung model: MZVLB512HAJQ-00000
    size: 476.94 GiB
  ID-3: /dev/sda vendor: Intenso model: SSD size: 953.87 GiB
  ID-4: /dev/sdb vendor: Seagate model: BUP Portable size: 4.55 TiB
    type: USB
  ID-5: /dev/sdc vendor: Seagate model: Expansion size: 1.82 TiB type: USB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 475.34 GiB used: 343.72 GiB (72.3%) fs: btrfs dev: /dev/dm-0
  ID-2: /boot size: 973.4 MiB used: 296.2 MiB (30.4%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/nvme1n1p2
  ID-3: /boot/efi size: 598.8 MiB used: 46.5 MiB (7.8%) fs: vfat
    dev: /dev/nvme1n1p1
  ID-4: /home size: 475.34 GiB used: 343.72 GiB (72.3%) fs: btrfs
    dev: /dev/dm-0
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: zram size: 8 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) dev: /dev/zram0
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 78.0 C pch: 80.0 C mobo: N/A
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
  Processes: 481 Uptime: 0m Memory: available: 31.17 GiB
  used: 6.26 GiB (20.1%) Shell: Zsh inxi: 3.3.27

I see nothing so far to indicate a problem with graphics.
Please post the output of dmesg | grep -i nvidia so we may see what the kernel is loading during boot.

I suspect the lag may be due to using the iGPU and not the dGPU since the nvidia card and drivers are capable of using hardware acceleration of graphics.

That may often be fixed when using xorg by following the instructions here

I’m pretty sure that the dGPU is being used because I can get normal fps on most games that I play. Also, since installing the nvidia firmware you mentioned, 4k youtube performance is back to normal. Now it’s just xorg session that is the problem.

Just to make clear, currently I’m running wayland, which runs mostly fine, despite having issues like crashing when my TV turns off and xwayland apps being blurry.

~  dmesg | grep -i nvidia
[    0.000000] Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=(hd4,gpt2)/vmlinuz-6.3.12-200.fc38.x86_64 root=UUID=660d15cc-6dad-4f7f-810f-e9393e51cf01 ro rootflags=subvol=root rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau modprobe.blacklist=nouveau nvidia-drm.modeset=1 initcall_blacklist=simpledrm_platform_driver_init rd.luks.uuid=luks-71ace3df-78d5-4ad5-8e55-3b7e471d205c rhgb quiet nvidia-drm.modeset=1 initcall_blacklist=simpledrm_platform_driver_init rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau modprobe.blacklist=nouveau
[    0.133790] Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=(hd4,gpt2)/vmlinuz-6.3.12-200.fc38.x86_64 root=UUID=660d15cc-6dad-4f7f-810f-e9393e51cf01 ro rootflags=subvol=root rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau modprobe.blacklist=nouveau nvidia-drm.modeset=1 initcall_blacklist=simpledrm_platform_driver_init rd.luks.uuid=luks-71ace3df-78d5-4ad5-8e55-3b7e471d205c rhgb quiet nvidia-drm.modeset=1 initcall_blacklist=simpledrm_platform_driver_init rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau modprobe.blacklist=nouveau
[   13.010555] nvidia-gpu 0000:01:00.3: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
[   13.510185] input: HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm=3 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.1/sound/card1/input34
[   13.510265] input: HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm=7 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.1/sound/card1/input35
[   13.510315] input: HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm=8 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.1/sound/card1/input36
[   13.510873] input: HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm=9 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.1/sound/card1/input37
[   14.434394] nvidia-gpu 0000:01:00.3: i2c timeout error e0000000
[   15.195216] nvidia: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.
[   15.195227] nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel.
[   15.207135] nvidia: module verification failed: signature and/or required key missing - tainting kernel
[   15.641489] nvidia-nvlink: Nvlink Core is being initialized, major device number 510
[   15.642260] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0003)
[   15.642359] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: vgaarb: changed VGA decodes: olddecodes=io+mem,decodes=none:owns=none
[   15.694480] NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module  535.54.03  Tue Jun  6 22:20:39 UTC 2023
[   15.842936] nvidia_uvm: module uses symbols nvUvmInterfaceDisableAccessCntr from proprietary module nvidia, inheriting taint.
[   15.963979] nvidia-uvm: Loaded the UVM driver, major device number 508.
[   16.038135] nvidia-modeset: Loading NVIDIA Kernel Mode Setting Driver for UNIX platforms  535.54.03  Tue Jun  6 22:17:39 UTC 2023
[   16.043818] [drm] [nvidia-drm] [GPU ID 0x00000100] Loading driver
[   16.968800] [drm] Initialized nvidia-drm 0.0.0 20160202 for 0000:01:00.0 on minor 1
[   19.681001] [drm] [nvidia-drm] [GPU ID 0x00000100] Framebuffer memory not appropriate for scanout
[   19.681006] [drm] [nvidia-drm] [GPU ID 0x00000100] Framebuffer memory not appropriate for scanout
[   29.078464] [drm] [nvidia-drm] [GPU ID 0x00000100] Framebuffer memory not appropriate for scanout
[   29.078469] [drm] [nvidia-drm] [GPU ID 0x00000100] Framebuffer memory not appropriate for scanout