Which nVidia driver for which situation?

Ask Fedora
1

So there’s nouveau, akmod-nvidia, akmod-nvidia-open, and the driver package downloadable from nVidia. Four driver possibilities, yes?

Which driver is appropriate for which system configuation?

After picking at it for two evenings in a row – and now I understand why Nobara exists – I have a working installation on my dual dGPU system (AMD Polaris + RTX 3060).

But is it correct?

sudo dnf list --installed | grep -i nvid
akmod-nvidia.x86_64                                  3:580.95.05-1.fc43                  rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
kmod-nvidia-6.17.7-300.fc43.x86_64.x86_64            3:580.95.05-1.fc43                  @commandline
kmod-nvidia-open-6.17.7-300.fc43.x86_64.x86_64       3:580.95.05-1.fc43                  @commandline
nvidia-gpu-firmware.noarch                           20251021-1.fc43                     d15e557246b143e68b4d7cf7c8078e9c
nvidia-modprobe.x86_64                               3:580.95.05-1.fc43                  rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
nvidia-persistenced.x86_64                           3:580.95.05-1.fc43                  rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
nvidia-settings.x86_64                               3:580.95.05-1.fc43                  rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia.x86_64                           3:580.95.05-1.fc43                  rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda.x86_64                      3:580.95.05-1.fc43                  rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda-libs.x86_64                 3:580.95.05-1.fc43                  rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-kmodsrc.x86_64                   3:580.95.05-1.fc43                  rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.x86_64                      3:580.95.05-1.fc43                  rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-power.x86_64                     3:580.95.05-1.fc43                  rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver

Should I be running akmod-nvidia-open instead? If so, why?

2

Is the correct driver.

1 Like
3

Cool.

But why? For which systems would the “open” driver be appropriate?

4

As I understand it, and what works for me is to simply use the akmod-nvidia package.

The system checks at build time to see if the gpu installed is supported by the open driver and automatically builds the open version if possible. It now only uses the proprietary version if the gpu is not supported by the open driver. This selection is done automatically.

2 Likes
5

Looks like you’re right:

kernel: NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX Open Kernel Module for x86_64  580.95.05  Release Build  (dvs-builder@U22-I3-B17-02-5)  Tue Sep 23 09:55:41 UTC 2025
kernel: nvidia-modeset: Loading NVIDIA UNIX Open Kernel Mode Setting Driver for x86_64  580.95.05  Release Build  (dvs-builder@U22-I3-B17-02-5)  Tue Sep 23 09:42:01 UTC 2025

What finally brought my driver adventure to a close: rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau modprobe.blacklist=nouveau in the kernel command line.

6

nouveau is the one that is preinstalled in your system. akmod-nvidia is the package that is all you needed. akmod-nvidia-open should be deprecated. Since akmod-nvidia contains the open modules and proprietary modules both.

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