Upgrading to Fedora 44 breaks Nvidia driver for older GPUs (GeForce 10xx and older)

Ask Fedora Common Issues
, , , , ,
1

Problem

After upgrading to Fedora 44, the Nvidia driver fails to load on certain cards. An error is displayed during boot:

NVIDIA kernel module missing. Falling back to nouveau

This issue affects GPUs that were supported by the “current” driver as of Fedora 43, including Maxwell-based models such as GTX 960 and Pascal-based models such as GTX 1060.

List of impacted GPUs

Matrox D-Series D1450
Matrox D-Series D1480
NVIDIA GeForce 830A
NVIDIA GeForce 830M
NVIDIA GeForce 840A
NVIDIA GeForce 840M
NVIDIA GeForce 845M
NVIDIA GeForce 920MX
NVIDIA GeForce 930A
NVIDIA GeForce 930M
NVIDIA GeForce 930MX
NVIDIA GeForce 940A
NVIDIA GeForce 940M
NVIDIA GeForce 940MX
NVIDIA GeForce 945A
NVIDIA GeForce 945M
NVIDIA GeForce GPU [PCI ID: 1392 1028 066A]
NVIDIA GeForce GT 1010
NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti with Max-Q Design
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 with Max-Q Design
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 5GB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 with Max-Q Design
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 with Max-Q Design
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 with Max-Q Design
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 745
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750Ti
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 850A
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 850M
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950A
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960A
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M
NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN X
NVIDIA GeForce MX110
NVIDIA GeForce MX130
NVIDIA GeForce MX150
NVIDIA GeForce MX230
NVIDIA GeForce MX250
NVIDIA GeForce MX330
NVIDIA GeForce MX350
NVIDIA N15M-Q3
NVIDIA P104-100
NVIDIA P104-101 (GP104)
NVIDIA P106-090
NVIDIA P106-100
NVIDIA TITAN V
NVIDIA TITAN V JHH Special Edition
NVIDIA TITAN X (Pascal)
NVIDIA TITAN Xp
NVIDIA TITAN Xp COLLECTORS EDITION
NVS 810
Quadro GP100
Quadro GV100
Quadro K1200
Quadro K2200
Quadro K2200M
Quadro K620
Quadro K620M
Quadro M1000M
Quadro M1200
Quadro M2000
Quadro M2000M
Quadro M2200
Quadro M3000 SE
Quadro M3000M
Quadro M4000
Quadro M4000M
Quadro M5000
Quadro M5000 SE
Quadro M5000M
Quadro M500M
Quadro M520
Quadro M5500
Quadro M6000
Quadro M6000 24GB
Quadro M600M
Quadro M620
Quadro P1000
Quadro P2000
Quadro P2000 with Max-Q Design
Quadro P2200
Quadro P3000
Quadro P3200
Quadro P3200 with Max-Q Design
Quadro P400
Quadro P4000
Quadro P4000 with Max-Q Design
Quadro P4200
Quadro P4200 with Max-Q Design
Quadro P500
Quadro P5000
Quadro P520
Quadro P5200
Quadro P5200 with Max-Q Design
Quadro P600
Quadro P6000
Quadro P620
Tesla M4
Tesla M40
Tesla M40 24GB
Tesla M6
Tesla M60
Tesla P100-PCIE-12GB
Tesla P100-PCIE-16GB
Tesla P100-SXM2-16GB
Tesla P4
Tesla P40
Tesla P6
Tesla PG500-216
Tesla PG503-216
Tesla V100-DGXS-32GB
Tesla V100-FHHL-16GB
Tesla V100-PCIE-16GB
Tesla V100-PCIE-16GB-LS
Tesla V100-PCIE-32GB
Tesla V100-SXM2-16GB
Tesla V100-SXM2-16GB-LS
Tesla V100-SXM2-32GB
Tesla V100-SXM2-32GB-LS
Tesla V100-SXM3-32GB
Tesla V100-SXM3-32GB-H
Tesla V100S-PCIE-32GB

Source: Appendix A. Supported NVIDIA GPU Products

Cause

This issue is triggered by a combination of two factors:

  1. Nvidia dropped support for the affected GPUs in driver version 590+ (October 2025).
  2. RPM Fusion ships driver version 595+ for Fedora 44 in the rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver repo.

Due to this, users who installed the “current” driver, i.e. akmod-nvidia would automatically upgrade to 595+ after upgrading to Fedora 44, leading to an unsupported driver for their GPU model.

Related Issues

Bugzilla report: none

Solution

You can either continue using the nouveau driver, if it works well enough for you (its performance is much lower compared to the proprietary driver, though), or you can replace the “current” 595 driver with the “legacy” 580xx proprietary driver.

Switching to the legacy 580xx proprietary driver

  1. Enable the “RPM Fusion Nonfree” repo as described at RPMFusion Configuration. (The legacy drivers are not present in the “RPM Fusion Nonfree NVIDIA driver” repo available in a standard Fedora installation). According to the guide, run:

    sudo dnf install https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

  2. Replace the “current” driver with the legacy 580xx version:

    sudo dnf remove xorg-x11-drv-nvidia akmod-nvidia
sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-580xx-cuda xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-580xx akmod-nvidia-580xx

  3. Wait for akmods to finish building the driver kmod. Run:

    sudo akmods

    This will wait for the previously-started build (in the background) to finish and then check again the kmods, rebuilding and installing the eventual ones that failed earlier. Logs can be inspected in /var/cache/akmods/nvidia-580xx/.last.log and /var/log/akmods/akmods.log.

  4. Reboot.

11

You can discuss this issue here.