Use Wayland or X.Org with Nvidia Proprietary Drivers? (Fedora 36, Gnome, DaVinci Resolve)

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1

First, I am a noob to Fedora 36 and Gnome (only used Windows or Linux Mint Cinnamon / MATE before).

Is it ok to use Wayland when using Nvidia proprietary drivers on Fedora 36 running Gnome? Or are we “supposed” to use X org? I have an RTX 2060 Super.

In particular I want to ensure I won’t have problems running DaVinci Resolve 17.

I could have sworn I read “somewhere” that one should use X org instead of Wayland after installing Nvidia proprietary drivers.

Running under wayland, I see that DaVinci Resolve “sees” my graphic card (it shows CUDA as the process and it lists my RTX 2060 under the selection by default).

I do notice a few artifacts when using various browsers though. Sometimes if I look at a page for a few seconds, and then scroll, I will get some weird momentary blinking in the upper and lower corners. Or sometimes when I start an app the boot screen for the app might blink a few times. I didn’t notice this when running an X org session, only when running a Wayland session.

The other thing is when I run:

nvidia-settings

in Wayland, the control panel for Nvidia Settings only shows a few parameters of my graphics card. If I open it in an X.org session it shows more (maybe all) parameters of my graphics card.

             .',;::::;,'.                mark_fenovo@fedora 
         .';:cccccccccccc:;,.            ------------------ 
      .;cccccccccccccccccccccc;.         OS: Fedora Linux 36 (Workstation Edition) x86_64 
    .:cccccccccccccccccccccccccc:.       Host: 90FB000CUS ideacentre 710-25ISH 
  .;ccccccccccccc;.:dddl:.;ccccccc;.     Kernel: 5.18.9-200.fc36.x86_64 
 .:ccccccccccccc;OWMKOOXMWd;ccccccc:.    Uptime: 52 mins 
.:ccccccccccccc;KMMc;cc;xMMc:ccccccc:.   Packages: 2188 (rpm), 14 (flatpak) 
,cccccccccccccc;MMM.;cc;;WW::cccccccc,   Shell: bash 5.1.16 
:cccccccccccccc;MMM.;cccccccccccccccc:   Resolution: 2560x1440 
:ccccccc;oxOOOo;MMM0OOk.;cccccccccccc:   DE: GNOME 42.2 
cccccc:0MMKxdd:;MMMkddc.;cccccccccccc;   WM: Mutter 
ccccc:XM0';cccc;MMM.;cccccccccccccccc'   WM Theme: Adwaita 
ccccc;MMo;ccccc;MMW.;ccccccccccccccc;    Theme: Adwaita [GTK2/3] 
ccccc;0MNc.ccc.xMMd:ccccccccccccccc;     Icons: Adwaita [GTK2/3] 
cccccc;dNMWXXXWM0::cccccccccccccc:,      Terminal: gnome-terminal 
cccccccc;.:odl:.;cccccccccccccc:,.       CPU: Intel i7-6700 (8) @ 4.000GHz 
:cccccccccccccccccccccccccccc:'.         GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER 
.:cccccccccccccccccccccc:;,..            Memory: 5038MiB / 23888MiB

nvidia-smi
Thu Jul  7 08:44:16 2022       
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 515.57       Driver Version: 515.57       CUDA Version: 11.7     |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                               |                      |               MIG M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce ...  Off  | 00000000:01:00.0  On |                  N/A |
| 30%   36C    P8     9W / 175W |   1420MiB /  8192MiB |      1%      Default |
|                               |                      |                  N/A |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
                                                                               
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                  |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                  GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                   Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|    0   N/A  N/A      1903      G   /usr/bin/gnome-shell              176MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2883    C+G   /opt/resolve/bin/resolve         1050MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2895      G   /usr/bin/Xwayland                  59MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      7179      G   /usr/bin/gnome-text-editor         46MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

dnf list installed *nvidia*
Installed Packages
akmod-nvidia.x86_64                                                         3:515.57-1.fc36                                    @rpmfusion-nonfree-updates
kmod-nvidia-5.18.9-200.fc36.x86_64.x86_64                                   3:515.57-1.fc36                                    @@commandline             
nvidia-persistenced.x86_64                                                  3:515.57-1.fc36                                    @rpmfusion-nonfree-updates
nvidia-settings.x86_64                                                      3:515.57-1.fc36                                    @rpmfusion-nonfree-updates
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia.x86_64                                                  3:515.57-1.fc36                                    @rpmfusion-nonfree-updates
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda.x86_64                                             3:515.57-1.fc36                                    @rpmfusion-nonfree-updates
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda-libs.x86_64                                        3:515.57-1.fc36                                    @rpmfusion-nonfree-updates
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-kmodsrc.x86_64                                          3:515.57-1.fc36                                    @rpmfusion-nonfree-updates
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.x86_64                                             3:515.57-1.fc36                                    @rpmfusion-nonfree-updates
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-power.x86_64                                            3:515.57-1.fc36                                    @rpmfusion-nonfree-updates
2

It is perfectly fine to use wayland with the nvidia drivers.

There are a few apps that still have problems but as long as the app you are using does not exhibit an issue that makes it unusable then feel free to use wayland.

If the app has a problem with wayland and not xorg then a bug should be filed on that particular app detailing the issue.

1 Like
3

Thank you, Jeff: Also, thank you for your help in the thread “Trouble installing proprietary nvidia driver” because it turns out I also had kmod installed like the original poster. Your advice helped me too, although for some reason, the temporary dnf --disablerepo=rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver install akmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda didn’t work for me, and I had to use the semi-permanent dnf config-manager --disable rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver instead. Probably just user error on my part :slight_smile:

While on that subject, is there ANY reason to have the rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver repos enabled??? Or best to leave them disabled? Will it try to install kmod every time I do an update if I enable it again?

Thanks again.

4

It is not necessary to have the rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver repo enabled at all if you have the rpmfusion-nonfree repo enabled. The driver repo is a subset of what is available in the nonfree repo and if they happen to be out of sync can cause problems.
I may have made an error there in that command by including the ‘=’ sign. The dnf help shows it as --disablerepo [repo]. I will edit the post there to fix my error.

1 Like
5

Thank you again, Jeff @computersavvy

You have certainly gone above and beyond the call of duty here.