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Looking Fedora 22/21 nVidia Drivers Install Guide?

This is guide, howto install nVidia proprietary drivers on Fedora 16 and disable Nouveau driver. This guide works with GeForce 6/7/8/9/200/300 series cards.

Fedora 16 nVidia driver installation is not much different from previous Fedora versions. I have tested this guide with a couple computers, so let me know, if you have some problems.

Before nVidia drivers installation⌗

Check is your nVidia card supported⌗ 

lspci |grep -i VGA

## Example output ##
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GT215 [GeForce GT 240] (rev a2)

List of Supported NVIDIA GPU Products, your card should found before 173.14.xx driver section.

NVIDIA Optimus Technology⌗

If your lspci |grep -i VGA output looks like following:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2n Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GF106 [GeForce GT 555M SDDR3] (rev a1)

Or you know that your computer have NVIDIA Optimus Technology, and it is impossible to turn Intel Graphics / NVDIDIA Optimus off in the BIOS then try If !1 0 user Viger excellent NVIDIA Optimus (Bumblebee) guide for Fedora 16 users.

Install nVidia proprietary drivers on Fedora 16 “Verne” and disable the nouveau driver⌗

1. Change root user⌗ 

su -
## OR ##
sudo -i

2. Make sure that you are running latest kernel and have latest SELinux policy packages⌗

If not then update kernel and reboot

yum update kernel* selinux-policy*
reboot

3. Add RPMFusion Repositories (Free and Non-Free)⌗

32-bit and 64-bit

rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

4. Install nVidia proprietary drivers for GeForce 6/7/8/9/200/300/400/500 series cards⌗

Select akmod, kmod or kmod-PAE from following.

akmod-nvidia⌗ 

yum install akmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs

Extra package for kernel-PAE users

yum install kernel-PAE-devel

or

kmod-nvidia⌗ 

yum install kmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs

or

kmod-nvidia-PAE and kernel-PAE-devel⌗ 

yum install kernel-PAE-devel kmod-nvidia-PAE

akmod is good option and easy way avoid problems on kernel updates and is best and only option if you use:

  • self-compiled kernel
  • older Fedora kernel
  • quickly changing kernels from updates-testing/rawhide

Full spec of kmod and akmod differences, check this.

5. Remove / disable nouveau drivers from kernel initramfs⌗ 

## Backup old initramfs nouveau image ##
mv /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r)-nouveau.img

## Create new initramfs image ##
dracut /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)

6. All is done and then just reboot⌗ 

reboot

Troubleshooting⌗

rdblacklist=nouveau nouveau.modeset=0 missing⌗

Some users have reported that the rdblacklist=nouveau nouveau.modeset=0 might be missing on grub2 “linux” row, after NVIDIA drivers installation. Add rdblacklist=nouveau nouveau.modeset=0 to /etc/default/grub file.

## Modify following line ##
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="quiet rhgb"

## to ##
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="quiet rhgb rdblacklist=nouveau nouveau.modeset=0"

Then make grub2 config with grub2-mkconfig command:

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Please let me know if you have some problems with nVidia drivers installation. You could also tell you if you got the drivers installed using this guide and what graphics card you have?