Installing NVIDIA driver for GT730 in Fedora has made it unusable!

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I was a Windows user since Windows 3.1. Now because of Microsoft’s greediness, I am trying to migrate into Linux, Fedora to be specific. Now, Fedora 40 Workstation is working like a charm with their own ‘NOUVEAU’ (which means ‘new and different’) driver but my GPU remains idle. So, I tried to install Nvidia RPM Fusion driver as Nvidia recommended and follow its guide from here: Howto/NVIDIA - RPM Fusion. It installed successfully but after that it became unusable. Please see the photos below to see what exactly happened when I reboot after installing the driver.
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This is the boot screen where I was stuck for 3-4 minutes. After that it showed the login screen as shown below.
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This is the login screen. Please see the DE options to choose on the lower right corner of the picture. Nvidia mentioned in its guide that their drivers can only be installed in XORG/X11 DE and after installing Fedora (actually reinstalling because I have done it several times) from scratch, I first selected the XORG DE from that DE selector. There were four options, Fedora Gnome, Fedora Gnome Classic, ** Fedora XORG Classic** and Fedora Xorg. In this picture, you can clearly see that there is no Xorg option but after booting it logged in Xorg by default. See the picture below.
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In this picture you can clearly see the Nvidia driver has been installed correctly and the DE is X11 ( Windowing system).
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In this picture you can see what happened after installing the driver. The texts on the buttons and menus don’t show aitomatically. They become visible only when by moving the mouse over them and the wallpapers are not visible at all as if they don’t exist.
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Here all menus are visible after I move my mouse over them. It feels like erasing a layer.

Right now I am preparing to experiment with Linux mint. See if that installs the driver properly or not. In the meantime, please give me some advice on how to make it work. I am not obcessed with Fedora, so you can also suggest any other distro but that distro should be built on current kernel and must be updated on regular basis and must work with this Nvidia driver. Please don’t ask me to buy a new card because they are expensive and my current GPU GT730 2GB DDR5 is working fine with Photoshop and video editing softwares, in Windows obviously. So it should work in Linux as well but if it doesn’t, then that will be the fault of that distro, not of the GPU.
My PC specs:

AMD FX4300 Quad core
Gigabyte 970A-DS3P v1 (this board doesn’t has any inbuilt GPU)
12GB RAM Kingston HyperX Fury
One 240GB Kingston SSD for Windows
One 500GB partitioned in two, one for Linux and other for little data as I have other drives for important data.
Nvidia GT 730 2GB DDR5 gaphics card

This is the configuration. Now I need some guidance from you. Please help.

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Return the nvidia card and buy an AMD graphics card… that was my only solution to nvidia issues.

Just for interest, why did you choose Fedora?

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That does not surprise me!!! I have Gentoo running a Nvidia card, that is older than yours, using the nouveau driver. Linux support for Nvidia has been dropped for kernel version 6. something, cannot remember the exact version. The best work around is to just use an AMD card.

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Daniel means old Nvidia cards. … and it is actually Nvidia that dropped the support, not Linux. There is a list somewhere of Nvidia cards that have lost Linux support.
New Nvidia cards have good Linux support, Nvidia is improving its Linux relationship.
About time too.
The only solution for older Nvidia cards in Linux is replacement. They will still work in Windows.

In general, AMD graphics cards have better Linux support thsn Nvidia, but that is changing.

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Thanks!!!
I believe this may be true for any Nvidia card. One might be able to downlaod the driver tar file and use chmod to make it bootable, but even it it worked, it would still be unsupported.

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Not sure.
There is a list somewhere of nvidia cards affected by the 5.19/6.0 kernel change
The list says drivers for newer cards work with post 6.0 kernels.

I should explain for @Skywalker71 … at around kernel 6.0 , the Linux kernel changed its interface for driver modules. Every device maker in the world changed their driver modules to suit, but Nvidia refused to change driver modules for its older cards, so they no longer worked in Linux.

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You may be right!!!

https://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/495.44/README/supportedchips.html
This is what I found!!!

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Lets find the list

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No chance because returning time frame has been passed long ago.

No problem. After I decided that I would leave Windows, I started researching about distros and though I feared Linux, I also admired it and I has always been a supporter of FOSS… morally. I was and am certain that I would not be a distro-hopper because I am leaving Windows not by choice but because of necessity. So, to choose my permanent distro, I had and have two main priorities. First, the distro must be user-friendly and second, it must be updated regularly. Regarding first point, there are many distros. But, regarding update, there is no one which can come close to Fedora. Plus its vast community which I thought would be most helpful and I was right. So, these two are the main reasons to choose Fedora over other distros. But, this gaphics card driver problem was unexpected. I have watched so many videos on distros, but none of them mentioned this problem. But, honestly, I don’t want to leave Fedora. If this Nvidia problem would not be solved, I have an old AMD graphics card lying somewhere in my home, don’t know whether it will work or not, but will try that if it still be alive. :slightly_frowning_face:

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This is not the list I saw previously
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA
but it has some info.

We need to find out if your card is supported today in Linux.

Dont change your distro choice. I was just curious.
Changing distro would not solve the graphics card problem

Here is the good news

https://www.linux.org/threads/the-unthinkable-has-happened-nvidia-has-finally-embraced-open-source-gpu-drivers.49942/

that means in future these graphics card problems in linux will disappaer.
Congratulations to Nvidia for coming to the party.

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I know. Linux always tries to support its users. Whatever I have written about Linux not supporting older hardwares actually out of frustration. Linux is best known for working on old hardwares which Windows doesn’t support. But, Nvidia is a corporate entity interested in making profits. So, it will drop and has dropped support for older cards otherwise its newer cards will be sold less and now AMD leaving graphics card market, Nvidia will be the only option which really sucks and for this reason I support reverse engineering to some extent. :slightly_frowning_face:

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What? I may missed something recently.
Look up the recent topics. We had a discussion with another fellow indian, who had gt730 in his laptop, and so running Davinci Resolve was problematic.
But to my surprise, he could do it somehow. So things look bad now, but there’s some hope.
I dig for this thread too…

Edit:

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More info here

Your 730 card needs the legacy 390.xx series drivers, and they will no longer run on recent linux kernels.

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My card is there. See the screenshot:

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Then you may be lucky enough to get 470.xx to drive it
but
its original driver is 390.xx, and that will not run in newer kernels.

I tried a substitute driver with my card. It half worked.

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@Skywalker71 Why dont u try pop once?

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I tried once and it was a mess. I will try today once again. But if you give me the step by step walkthrough, how you got it working, it would be very helpful.

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Dang, they made a lot of cards!

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I ultimately succeeded to install it in Fedora-XFCE 40 spin but it, as you have mentioned, ‘half-worked’. My 1920 x 1080 pixel monitor showed only 1600 x 900 that also manually configured, otherwise 800 x 600 was default which means it will not be able to use the card’s full potential.

In Windows, the version is 472.12 with Cuda and I think that is the cause of its ‘half-working’ status. The driver is not fully compatible with the card.

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But with Pop im able to use 1920 x 1080 on my new fingers monitor