I was thinking about switching to Linux for a long time now, and I just decided to go for it.
My goal is to make a dual boot with Fedora/Windows, and later use Windows in a VM with GPU passthrough.
I feel like a noob - I already ran into a problem even before installing Linux and don‘t know how to fix it:
I downloaded the latest Workstation iso and created a bootable USB stick (with Fedora Media Writer).
After booting from it I chose the option to start the live system.
The normal starting procedure of Linux started, but after „Started GNOME Display Manager“ the checklist disappears, display turns black and just a blinking „_“ appears in the upper left corner.
Nothing happens after that and I can‘t type anything.
After pressing the computers power button once, the checklist reappears, everything looks normal and it shuts down.
I would be really grateful for any kind of help!
And I would also appreciate if you‘ve some advices/resources to read, regarding my planned setup described above. I‘ve had some difficulties finding some good and up to date resources.
It wouldn’t prevent you from using it. You just need to install the OS, and the nvidia driver first before it will work.
Unfortunately I don’t know much about passthrough as I haven’t set it up myself, but you should be able to. You may need to use a different kernel depending on your hardware and how it divides the IOMMU groups.
This may sound dumb, but when running Fedora off of a USB it is honestly really slow. I have been running a fedora 29 that I installed to a usb (not the live version, a full install with usb as disk).
How long did you wait before hitting the power? When running mine off usb 3.0 device in a 3.0 port, I still have to wait up to 5 minutes for my desktop to come up after logging in.
Nvidia drivers from Nvidia are proprietary and Fedora does not include them with its install image. (They can be installed later from another source.)
The open source Nvidia driver that Fedora does use is called Nouveau. Support for Nvidia GPU’s in Nouveau is something of a reverse-engineered effort that happens after a card is released. Very likely the 2080 is not supported in Fedora 29. Hence the black screen after booting the installation image.
The usual remedy is to follow the advice about using “nomodeset” (be sure it’s entered on the correct line) after ensuring the machine will attempt to boot up using a Nouveau-compatible card, the 970 in this case. The install image should boot correctly into the Fedora installer, although the display may be less than ideal. Once the system is installed and you have rebooted, Gnome’s “first use” routine runs and asks you to do some basic account set up. Once the system is running well, you can install the proprietary Nvidia driver, switch to the 2080, reboot and cross your fingers. (Gnome includes a “Software” GUI app. On first use it will prompt you to enable some repositories. If you do that and allow the app to update itself, you can search on “Nvidia” to locate the proprietary driver to install.)
Be aware that Ubuntu and the Ubuntu derivatives like Linux Mint specifically target new Linux users more than Fedora and that their installer is simpler and probably easier and safer for a new user who is creating a dual-boot system.
Hi, thank you very much for that detailed answer! That’s really helpful for me! I know, Fedora isn‘t the best to start with, and I don‘t expect it to be easy for me to switch, but I really want to do so.
It wasn‘t possible for me to retry installing Fedora earlier.
I‘ve just removed my 2080 and used my 970 to boot from USB.
There was still no ‚Install Fedora‘ option, and the listed items were exactly as described in my older post.
After pressing ‚e‘ while ‚Start Fedora-Workstation-Live 29‘ was active, then adding ‚nomodeset‘ to the line ‚linuxefi‘ and exiting with ctrl-x, it still booted normal til ‚Started GNOME Display Manager‘ was displayed. After that the blinking ‚_‘ reappears.
What I am offering is an analyses of your problem. But its not for starters and can shriek off some ppl. Hope you dont mind.
Can you switch to console with ALT+F1 or ALT+CTRL+F1 (or any of those combination with a different F key)?
You may need root or user password to enter CLI (command line interface).
In the CLI you can look up what the boot command was using cat /proc/cmdline .
Also the output of the X-Server could give some hints. tail -n50 /var/log/Xorg.0.log
I know this is far complicated when new to linux, but those outputs would give us much information what went wrong.
Not sure which paste-bin redhat prefers but these tool would make the process of us showing the output quite simple. Here is a link to chose an paste-bin. You can install it via rpm command, like rpm fpaste.
On both commands I posted you could add an > filename.txt and then upload the file via fpaste filename.txt, as example…
And I‘ve successfully uploaded both files, but It’s late here and I‘ve had to put my 2080 back in earlier. Now I don‘t have time to take it out again - so those two files are with the 2080 back in place.
VESA: driver for VESA chipsets: vesa
open /dev/dri/card0: No such file or directory
The live distro u using doesn’t use nouveau drivers, thats why no GUI (graphical user interface) could be created.
I would suggest to try it with the other GPU again.
Also you can put the hole Xorg.0.log into paste-bin, since u using a live distro. that was a bit misleading by me. fpaste /var/log/Xorg.0.log
addition…
I haven’t seen your hole Xorg.0.log jet, but as far I could see there is no GTX 9xx support neither, according to this output …
Most RedHat variants like Fedora are ancient compaired to other distros. Thats why they are stable as f***.
I assume you will need to manually update drivers for your GPUs and that can be an adventure when SElinux is securing the distro. But I’m not sure this will be the case for Fedora. I know its the case for RedHat.
Where did you get the ISO? A Fedora special interest group maintains updated install images that incorporate all Fedora updates up to the time the images are prepared. (Hundreds) Have a look: here. These are the images I use.
BTW, as you likely know, Fedora is not a variant of Red Hat with old packages. Pretty much the opposite. Red Hat begins with a Fedora version after its end-of-life (meaning 6 months+ of Fedora development and approx. 13 months of real world use) , perhaps adds features from the release before that, and then moves on to alpha and beta work, which usually takes several months for a point release. The desktop features don’t keep up with Fedora, obviously, but even still the current release is using Gnome 3.28.
So, if my 2080 and 970 isn‘t supported - what are my options to install Fedora on my system? Is it possible to update the driver before even installing the OS?
@LostMoon I‘ve used the Fedora Media Writer Tool to download the iso and to create the bootable USB Stick. Would it make a difference for me to use one of the ISO’s from your link?
