Fedora 18 nVidia Drivers Install / Uninstall Guide

Looking Fedora 22/21 nVidia Drivers Install Guide?

This is guide, howto install nVidia proprietary drivers on Fedora 18 “Spherical Cow” and disable Nouveau driver. This guide works with GeForce 8/9/200/300/400/500 series cards (and currently also with GeForce 6/7). Later you might need different version of nVidia drivers if you use GeForce 6/7 card.

Fedora 18 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.

1. Before nVidia drivers installation⌗

1.1 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. I upgrade this guide later when drivers are updated 313.xx version.

1.2 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. Check If !1 0 forums user Viger guide instead Fedora 18 for NVIDIA Optimus users (with Bumblebee/Primus rpm).

2. Install nVidia proprietary drivers on Fedora 18 “Spherical Cow” and disable the nouveau driver⌗

2.1 Change root user⌗

su -
## OR ##
sudo -i

2.2 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

2.3 Add RPMFusion Repositories (Free and Non-Free)⌗

32-bit and 64-bit

yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-18.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-18.noarch.rpm

## OR ##

yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-18.noarch.rpm
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-18.noarch.rpm

2.4 Install nVidia proprietary drivers for GeForce 8/9/200/300/400/500 (and currently GeForce 6/7) 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.

2.5 All is done and then just reboot⌗

reboot

2.6 VDPAU/VAAPI support⌗

To enable video acceleration support for your player (Note: you need Geforce 8 or later).

yum install vdpauinfo libva-vdpau-driver libva-utils

3. Uninstall nVidia proprietary drivers on Fedora 18 “Spherical Cow” and enable the nouveau driver⌗

I assume that you installed nVidia driver with this guide, then do following.

3.1 Change root user⌗

su -
## OR ##
sudo -i

3.2 Uninstall nVidia Driver Packages⌗

yum remove xorg-x11-drv-nvidia\* nvidia-settings nvidia-xconfig

3.4 Then Reboot System⌗

reboot