NVIDIA"

About this Howto

This howto will help you install the correct NVIDIA driver on Fedora for your graphics card as well as troubleshoot common driver problems.

The prerequisite is to have followed the Configuration page to have at least the RPM Fusion nonfree section available.

Determining your card model

nVidia has several driver series, each of which has different hardware support. To determine which driver you need to install, you'll first need to find your graphics card model.

If you don't know it, open a Terminal (Applications > System Tools > Terminal) and type:

/sbin/lspci | grep -e VGA

You can also check the supported chips section and see which series is recommended for you card, then install the appropriate driver series. Please remember that you need additional steps for optimus.

You are probably in the Optimus case if your NVIDIA card is found with the next command:

/sbin/lspci | grep -e 3D

Installing the drivers

Please remember that once the driver is installed, there is no need to configure xorg.conf by default unless you are using an Optimus device. Changes will take effect after a full reboot on the newest kernel.

Current GeForce/Quadro/Tesla

Supported on current stable Xorg server release.

This driver is suitable for any GPU found in 2010 and later.

dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia akmod-nvidia "kernel-devel-uname-r == $(uname -r)"
dnf update -y

Please remember to wait until the kmod get built earch time a new kernel rise up. This can take up to 5 minutes on some systems.

Legacy GeForce 8/9/200

Supported on current stable Xorg server release.

dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-340xx akmod-nvidia-340xx "kernel-devel-uname-r == $(uname -r)"
dnf update -y

Please remember to wait until the kmod get built earch time a new kernel rise up. This can take up to 5 minutes on some systems.

Legacy GeForce 6/7

Supported on current stable Xorg server release.

dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-304xx akmod-nvidia-304xx "kernel-devel-uname-r == $(uname -r)"
dnf update -y

Please remember to wait until the kmod get built earch time a new kernel rise up. This can take up to 5 minutes on some systems.

Legacy GeForce 5 (FX series)

Supported up to Fedora 20 - EOL, no more nvidia updates

yum install akmod-nvidia-173xx "kernel-devel-uname-r == $(uname -r)"
yum update -y

Legacy GeForce 2 through GeForce 4

Supported up to Fedora 14 - EOL, no more nvidia updates

yum install akmod-nvidia-96xx "kernel-devel-uname-r == $(uname -r)"
yum update -y

Special notes

Optimus

With Fedora 25 and later, Optimus devices are supported automatically by default. Please see the dedicated Howto/nVidia_Optimus.

CUDA

The driver support CUDA when installing the xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda subpackage. Please have a look on the dedicated CUDA Howto

dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda

VULKAN

The main package support vulkan, but you need to install the vulkan libraries if requested.

dnf install vulkan

Latest/Beta driver

You can install the latest drivers from Rawhide using the following command:

dnf install "kernel-devel == $(uname -r)"
dnf update -y
dnf --enablerepo=rpmfusion-nonfree-rawhide install akmod-nvidia 

Or if you want to grab it from the latest fedora stable release:

dnf install "kernel-devel-uname-r == $(uname -r)"
dnf update -y
dnf --releasever=25 install akmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia

x86_64 (64bit) users

If you wish to have 3D acceleration in 32bit packages such as Wine, be sure to install the appropriate 32bit version of the xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs package for your driver variant. For example, if you installed kmod-nvidia then you will require xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.i686, but if you install kmod-nvidia-96xx, you will need xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-96xx-libs.i686. If using Fedora 11 you will need to use xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.i586, with Fedora 10 or older use xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.i386.

PAE (Physical Address Extension) kernel users

If you are on a 32bit (i686) system and have the kernel-PAE installed to access more RAM, please install kernel-PAE-devel. Please note that this step is not required for any 64bit (x64_64) users.

VDPAU/VAAPI

In order to enable video acceleration support for your player and if your nvidia card is recent enough (Geforce 8 and later is needed). You can install theses packages:

# dnf install vdpauinfo libva-vdpau-driver libva-utils

With the native vdpau backend from a nvidia card, the output is similar to this:

$ vdpauinfo 
display: :0.0   screen: 0
API version: 1
Information string: NVIDIA VDPAU Driver Shared Library  280.13  Wed Jul 27 17:15:20 PDT 2011
...

Here is an example of an accurate output of vainfo, when the bridge to the VAAPI is correctly installed.

$ vainfo 
libva: libva version 0.32.0
Xlib:  extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":0.0".
libva: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva: Trying to open /usr/lib64/dri/nvidia_drv_video.so
libva: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA API version: 0.32
vainfo: Driver version: Splitted-Desktop Systems VDPAU backend for VA-API - 0.7.3
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
...

Akmods

An akmod is a type of package similar to dkms. As you start your computer, the akmod system will check if there are any missing kmods and if so, rebuild a new kmod for you. Akmods have more overhead than regular kmod packages as they require a few development tools such as gcc and automake in order to be able to build new kmods locally. If you think you'd like to try akmods, simply replace kmod with akmod in the instructions above and run them again. For example, kmod-nvidia-96xx becomes akmod-nvidia-96xx. Akmods are fully compatible with regular kmods, so you can switch between the two or even use both at once without any problems.

Nouveau compatibility

As nouveau is enabled by default starting with Fedora 11, you may experience problem which is caused by the nouveau kernel module being present in the initrd image. Once the driver is installed and after the reboot, this command should not output anything:

lsmod |grep nouveau

Secure Boot

Secure Boot currently blocks the kernel from loading the nvidia driver. It must be disabled before booting the OS.

Rawhide

Rawhide kernels are built with debug enabled GPL-only symbols which kernel is incompatible with the nvidia binary-only driver. You need to use the Rawhide nodebug repository.

Please remind that Xorg server version is also to take into consideration. In the case of incompatibilities with the xorg-server, you might need to downgrade to the previous fedora release:

dnf downgrade xorg-x11-server\* --releasever=22 --allowerasing
echo "exclude=xorg-x11*" >> /etc/dnf/dnf.conf

Uninstall the nvidia driver

dnf remove xorg-x11-drv-nvidia\*

Recover from nvidia installer

The nvidia binary driver installer overwrite some configuration and libraries. If you want to recover to a clean state, either to use nouveau or the packaged driver, use:

rm -f /usr/lib{,64}/libGL.so.* /usr/lib{,64}/libEGL.so.*
rm -f /usr/lib{,64}/xorg/modules/extensions/libglx.so
dnf re-install xorg-x11-server-Xorg mesa-libGL mesa-libEGL
mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.saved

Bug Report

If you still cannot make the driver to work, you can either report a problem to nVidia or to RPM Fusion packager team. Please read: If you have a problem, PLEASE read this first

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