Fedora 17 nVidia Drivers Install Guide (disable nouveau driver)

Looking Fedora 22/21 nVidia Drivers Install Guide?

This is guide, howto install nVidia proprietary drivers on Fedora 17 “Beefy Miracle” and disable Nouveau driver. This guide works with GeForce 6/7/8/9/200/300 series cards.

Fedora 17 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 GT218 [GeForce G210] (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 this guide is not working on your system..

Install nVidia proprietary drivers on Fedora 17 “BeefyMiracle” 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

yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

## OR ##

yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck 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

kmod-nvidia⌗

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

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