3D Support For NVIDIA Graphic Cards On Linux

You've got an NVIDIA display adapter. You have installed Fedora on your computer. You have now discovered that you can't get 3D working on your computer. What to do?

Fedora or any GNU/Linux distribution does not fully support the 3D functionalities of your display adapter out of the box. To get them working you have install the propitiatory blob. Installing them is quite easy. Here's how you would do it.

Click Applications on the gnome-panel, select System Tools, click Terminal. On the terminal type the below commands
Switch user to root:

Enable the livna repository and install the NVIDIA blob.

Reboot your computer. Just in case your mouse does not show up or you can't get the right screen resolutions, you will end up editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. If you are using a GNU/Linux distribution other than Fedora, you will have to obtain the NVIDIA blob from the repositories that have it. You could also download it from the NVIDIA website.

Wait, we are not done yet. Yum may refuse to update your kernel next time because of the NVIDIA kernel module. To solve this problem you can remove kmod-nvidia by typing yum remove kmod-nvidia in the terminal as root. After removing kmod-nvidia you can update your kernel. Once done, reinstall kmod-nvidia to get back the 3D support. Another scenario that requires you to uninstall kmod-nvidia is when people acknowledge your kernel pedantries. To prove that kmod-nvidia isn't the actual culprit you will be asked to remove kmod-nvidia and reproduce the problem.

How do you solve this problem? There are many ways to do that. When buying a computer make sure there are free software drivers for your hardware. Ask in the distribution mailing lists and forums whether the distribution you have chosen works out of the box with full hardware support. Intel and ATI provide free and open source software drivers or provide their hardware specs so that people can write free software drivers for them.

If you choose NVIDIA despite knowing all the problems you might encounter, you can do one another thing. Visit the NVIDIA contact page and write to them about your woes. Ask them to provide free software drivers or open up hardware specs to public so that people can write free software drivers for their hardware.

Yet another thing you could do is do some reverse engineering on NVIDIA hardware and write free software drivers for them. If none of the above recommendations seem appropriate you always have the option to live with whatever comes your way.